ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two important physical quantities: linear momentum and angular momentum. It presents multiparticle systems, continuous mass distributions, and center of mass. The chapter develops relationships between the total momentum of a system of particles to the momentum of the system’s center of mass. It also develops a relationship between the angular momentum of a system of particles to angular momentum of the system’s center of mass. The chapter shows that these relationships will also hold for continuous mass distributions. Problems involving momentum often involve multiple objects, such as in the case of collisions. Simpson’s rule has two advantages over the trapezoid rule. First, it breaks up the range of the integral into more pieces. Second, it replaces the straight-line top of the trapezoid with a quadratic polynomial. Finally, it discusses numerical integration techniques which will be useful when finding a system’s center of mass.
