Think about baseball. When you hit a baseball, do you just smack it with the bat or do you follow through with the swing? You follow through right? Do you see how impulse relates to your baseball swing? If you follow through with your swing, the bat stays in contact with the ball for a longer period of time. This causes the ball to go farther. Follow through is important in golf, bowling, tennis and many sports for the same reason. The longer the force is imparted, the farther and faster your ball will go.
Ok, let’s add impulse and momentum together and see what we get. Impulse changes momentum. If an object puts an impulse on another object, the momentum of both objects will change. If you continue to push on your stalled car, you will change the momentum of the car right? If you are riding your bike while not paying any attention and crash into the back of a parked car, you will put an impulse on the car and you and the car’s momentum will change. (As a kid, I did this pretty often. That’s what you get when you ride and wonder at the same time. Believe me when I tell you that my momentum changed a lot more than the car’s did!!)
In fact, there is a mathematical formula about this impulse and momentum thing. Impulse = change in momentum or Ft = change in mv. Force x time = mass x velocity. Does that sound familiar to anyone? It’s awfully similar to Newton’s second law (F=ma) isn’t it? In fact it’s the same thing: F t = m v
Now if we divide both sides by “t” we get F = mv / t.
Another way to say v is d/t (distance over time). So now we have F = m (d/t) / t. Those two “t’s” together are the same as t2 and d/t2 is “a” (acceleration). So what we have now is F = ma!
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