Conservation of Energy Implies Conservation of Momentum: How We Can Explain Conservation of Momentum to Before-Calculus Students

Authors

Eric Freudenthal, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Eric Hagedorn, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Olga Kosheleva, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

8-2013

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-13-53

To appear in Journal of Uncertain Systems, 2014, Vol. 8.

Abstract

In solving physics problems, it is often important to use the laws of conservation of energy and momentum. While most people have intuitive understanding of energy and of its conservation, there is usually no intuition behind momentum, and known textbook derivations of conservation of momentum use calculus -- which is usually taught after momentum. In this paper, we show how the law of conservation of momentum can be explained to before-calculus student: by using the fact that this law can be derived from the more intuitive conservation of energy if we consider energy in different coordinate systems.