Impulse: the Kick Is an Area

You'll learnthat impulse is the area under a force-time graph, equal to the momentum change.

A hard shove and a long lean can deliver exactly the same total kick. Watch the force-time graph shade itself in, and learn why every airbag, pillow, and crumple zone is really just negotiating with the same rectangle.

8 STEPS · 6 QUICK CHECKS · v5

MOMENTUM LAB

Before you start

What you're looking at

A 2 kg cart at +1 m/s and a force-vs-time graph showing two pushes: a flat 4 N and a peaked ramp to 8 N.

The question

What do the two different pushes have in common that brings the cart to the same +5 m/s?

Watch for

The shaded area under each push, not its peak height. Predict which of the two areas is larger.

What the symbols mean

Horizontal axis is time (s), vertical is force (N); pink shading is impulse, blue stays velocity throughout.

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