Momentum

Every moving object has momentum. (Photons are interesting in this respect, since they do have momentum, but have no mass. There's an interesting discussion about this here.)
Anyway, every object has momentum since:

Momentum (kg m/s) = mass (kg) × velocity (m/s)

Momentum is an object's ability to continue moving in the same direction, after it's been pushed, etc.br From the above equation, you can see that momentum has both magnitude and direction, extended from the velocity; the magnitude comes from the mass.

In either a collision or an explosion, so long as no external forces are acting upon the object, its momentum remains the same. This is called the conservation of momentum.



You can use this equation triangle to calculate the momentum, velocity or mass of any object, if you know the other two!