Welcome to the first episode of Physics Clas!! I truly hope you all are doing well and I wish I was going to school in the morning to see your happy faces!!

In the blog, I simply wanted to take a breath and go back to some simple concepts about momentum, its conservation and review some basic problem solving techniques with individual objects before we moved forward into collisions. So, I hope it’s helpful and sort of resets us as we move forward. I’m still working on my camera placing because iMovie shrinks the frame a wee bit but overall I’m pretty psyched about the video, except for my hair!! If you could comment on the sponsor of the episode (there is a little commercial in there) that would be great!!

So, we remember that momentum is equal to the objects mass times its velocity (p = mv) and that momentum is going to be conserved as long as there are no external forces acting upon the object. Also, since velocity is a vector, so is momentum which means it has a magnitude AND a direction. Finally, the impulse-momentum theorem states that the force applied over a time interval is equal to the change in momentum, (Ft = (delta)p, with delta implying “change in”).

So here is a question for you wrap your head around that touches on all the bits from this episode.

(1) A sudden gust of wind exerts a force of 10.0 N for 1.2 s in a direction opposite to the flight of a red-tailed hawk, whose speed was 5.00 m/s before the gust of wind. As a result, the bird ends up moving in the opposite direction at 7.00 m/s. What is the mass of the hawk??

Have fun!! Thanks again!! Y’all are amazing!!!