Mistake Master
Mistake Master · AP Physics 1 · Unit 4 · Step-Through Animation
Momentum: Velocity with Mass Behind It
You'll learnthat momentum is mass times velocity, a vector carrying both size and direction.
One product, two ingredients, full directions included. A crawling truck and a sprinting cyclist can carry the same momentum — and a minus sign never made anything smaller. Watch the arrows, then add them like the vectors they are.
MOMENTUM LAB
Before you start
What you're looking at
A 2 kg cart rolling east at 3 m/s on a frictionless track, carrying two arrows above it: velocity and momentum.
The question
How do mass and velocity combine into momentum, and what does a minus sign do to it?
Watch for
The momentum arrow built from the velocity arrow, stretched by mass but never turned; predict its length.
What the symbols mean
Blue arrow is velocity (m/s); pink arrow is momentum (kg·m/s); both share one direction but carry different units.
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