A man drives a 343 kg jeep with a total velocity of 81.7 miles/h, what is the jeep's momentum?

Question

A man drives a 343 kg jeep with a total velocity of 81.7 miles/h, what is the jeep's momentum? (1 mile = 1609 meters) Report your answer to 1 decimal point.

Answer 1

The equation for linear momentum is p = mv, where p is the linear momentum of the object, m is the mass of the object, and v is the velocity of the object.

We are given...

mass of the jeep, m = 343 kg

velocity, v = 81.7 miles/h

The SI units for linear momentum, p, are kg⋅m/s, therefore to properly calculate the linear momentum, we need to convert the velocity units of miles/hr into m/sec. This can be done using dimensional analysis, first fixing the units of time (hr to sec)...

v = (81.7 miles / hour) x (1 hour / 60 min) x (1 min / 60 sec) = 0.0227 miles/sec

Then we can convert the miles into meters...

v= (0.00227 miles / sec) x (1609 m / 1 mile) = 36.5 m/sec

Now we can plug everything into the equation p = mv

p = (343 kg) x (36.5 m/sec) = 12,519.5 kg⋅m/s

I hope this helps!!