1.

3c Impulse
Obvious question: youre stranded by a fire on an upper floor and have to jump. Would you rather jump onto grass or concrete? Why? Does what you land on affect your speed of fall? What difference does a different material make when you land on it? Try to use precise physics terminology rather than everyday language. What is the physics behind this situation? Lets look at some numbers. A student jumps from a window ledge 2 m high. Find their velocity when they reach the ground. This will be the same whatever surface they land on. When the student lands, the different surfaces have a different amount of give. This means the time for their deceleration will be different. For this example we will take the time of landing on the concrete to be 0 .01 s and on the grass to be 0.3 s, as the grass gives way underneath. Estimate the average force exerted on the student by the concrete and grass. (b) Find the deceleration and therefore the average force: concrete grass

What do you think about these results? If you had no choice but to jump onto concrete, what could you do to help minimise the chance of injury? In each of these examples, the change in momentum is the same since the speed at which the student hits the ground is the same. The difference is the time in which the change in momentum takes place. Rearranging Newtons second law helps to make this more explicit.

OUR DYNAMIC UNIVERSE (H, PHYSICS) Learning and Teaching Scotland 2011

Momentum and Newtons second law Newtons second law: F = ma but a= v u t

so

v u mv mu F = m = t t

which is the rate of change of momentum. This how Newton himself defined his second law. The law can be rearranged:

Ft = mv mu

The product Ft is called the impulse . Impulse is a vector quantity . The units of Ft could be kg m s 1 since these are the units of momentum, but they are also Ns, and these are the units that should be used for impulse. The force calculated from the impulse relationship is the average force . The force involved is rarely constant, eg consider a tennis ball hit by a racquet:

The force exerted by the racquet on the ball will change with time. The impulse is calculated from the area under the graph, so: impulse = area under a forcetime graph This is the case regardless of the shape of the graph. Leading on from this, what else is represented by the area under a forcetime graph?

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Worked examples 1. In a snooker game, the cue ball, of mass 0.2 kg, is accelerated from the rest to a velocity of 2 m s 1 by a force from the cue which lasts 50 ms. what size of force is exerted by the cue? u = 0, v = 2 m s 1 , t = 50 ms = 0.05 s, m = 0.2 kg, F = ?

Ft = mv mu F 0.05 = (0.2 2) (0.2 0) F 0.05 = 0.4 F=8N

2. A tennis ball of mass 100 g, initially at rest, is hit by a racquet. The racquet is in contact with the ball for 20 ms and the force of contact varies over this period, as shown in the graph. Determine the speed of the ball as it leaves the racquet.

F/N 400

20

t / ms

impulse

= area under graph = 20 10 3 400 = 4 N s

u=0 m = 100 g = 0.1 kg v=?

Ft = mv mu 4 = 0.1 v (0.1 0) 4 = 0.1 v v = 40 m s 1

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3. A tennis ball of mass 0.1 kg travelling horizontally at 10 m s 1 is struck in the opposite direction by a tennis racket. The tennis ball rebounds horizontally at 15 m s 1 and is in contact with the racket for 50 ms. Calculate the force exerted on the ball by the racket. m = 0.1 kg u = 10 m s 1 v = -15 m s 1 (opposite direction to u ) t = 50 ms = 0.05 s

Ft = mv mu 0.05 F = (0.1 (15)) (0.1 10) = 1.5 1 = 2.5 F = 50 N (the negative sign indicates force in opposite direction to the initial velocity)

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