lecture 5

Topics: Where are we now? Newtons second law and momentum The third law Rocket motion Scattering and kinematics Elastic collisions Inelastic collisions The speed of a bullet Where are we? In the previous lecture, we discussed conservation of energy. Today, after nishing what we didnt get done on Thursday, I will talk about conservation of momentum and discuss the notion of scattering. I think this will be much easier, and we may spend much of the time in class on the material from last time. Newtons second law and momentum Newtons second law for a single particle of mass m can be written as F = dp dt (1)

where the quantity p is the momentum of the particle, and is given in Newtonian mechanics by p = mv . (2)

The form (1) actually turns out to be a better and more general way of writing the second law than the familiar F = ma. In this form, (1) [but not (2)] is true even when the speed of the particle approaches the speed of light, where as we will see in a few weeks, many of the common-sense aspects of mechanics begin to break down. In addition, as we will see, (1) often allows us to deal more easily with situations in which objects come apart, or coalesce. The third law So if force is always changing momentum according to (1), how is it that momentum is conserved? The answer that you probably learned in high-school is Newtons third law. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If thing 1 produces a force on thing 2, then thing 2 produces a force with equal magnitude and in the opposite direction on thing 1. If this is correct, then any change of the momentum of something is always compensated by a change in the momentum of the things that are producing the forces on it. The total momentum of any isolated system that has no external forces acting on it is always conserved. For now, you should just accept this. Later in the course (starting next week) we will talk more about why it is true. Here, we will be content to see how it is useful. 1

Rocket motion The most important uses of conservation of momentum all have a couple of things in common. The rst is that using momentum conservation allows us to avoid thinking about incredibly complicated details of how the forces work that turn out to be irrelevant in the end. In fact, I personally often nd (2) very confusing in situations where the system is changing. Trying to gure out the forces can be very confusing. It is usually easier and more reliable to make progress instead by comparing the system at two different times and using the fact that the momentum is the same. These two times may be far apart or close together. Sometimes we are interested in the initial condition of a system and the nal condition, and we dont much care about what happens in between. But sometimes, we are interested in comparing times that are very close together to use conservation of momentum to analyze the dynamics of the system. In the latter case, we can almost always analyze the problem by looking at the difference between the system at time t and time t + dt. A good example of using momentum conservation to simplify the analysis of dynamics is rocket motion. The nozzle of a rocket engine is a very complicated system. There are lots of forces acting on it as the rocket fuel explodes in the nozzle and is forced out at high velocity. If you had to understand in detail the forces acting on the stuff that is ejected from a rocket engine to see how the rocket would move, it would be an impossible job. But the point is that you never have to mention force at all. We are not interested in the force. There is no good way to measure this force directly. So get rid of it. Conservation of momentum ensures that all you need to know is the velocity, u, of the ejected material, and the rate at which mass is being ejected, dm/dt. You can simply gure out the rate of change in velocity of the rocket, dv/dt, by requiring that momentum be conserved. First suppose that the rocket is at rest at time t = 0. Then at t = 0 the momentum of both the rocket, pf , and the momentum of the fuel, pf , are zero. An innitesimal time dt later, the momentum of the ejected material is pf = u dm and this must be compensated by the change in momentum of the rocket in the opposite direction, pr = m dv .
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dm

pr = 0 t=0 pf = 0 pr = m dv t = dt pf = dm u (3) pr = m v t=0 pf = dm v

u dm Thus

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dv dm = u dt dt This is also true if the rocket is moving with velocity v . m

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dm

vu dm

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pr = m (v + dv ) t = dt pf = dm (v u)

The changes in momentum are the same, though the total momentum has changed. If you are really more comfortable talking about forces, you can use conservation of momentum to calculate the total force on the rocket. then you know that the rate of change of momentum of the ejected material is u dm/dt. Since this momentum is being produced, the rocket must be pushing on the stuff with a force dp dm F = =u (4) dt dt F = u dm/dt. And therefore, according to Newtons third law, the stuff is pushing back on the rocket with a total resultant force of this magnitude. Notice again that the rate of change of the rockets momentum is independent of how the rocket is moving (remember that u is the velocity of the ejected fuel with respect to the rocket). This means that the force on the rocket looks the same in any inertial frame. This is an example of an important principle in Newtonian mechanics - Galilean Relativity. Galilean Relativity is the statement that Newtons laws are valid in any inertial frame. Forces cannot change in going from one inertial frame to another, because the force is proportional to the acceleration, and the acceleration depends only on the rate of change of velocity. Any xed velocity of the the inertial frame just cancels out when we compute the acceleration. Thus people in the rocket cannot tell how fast they are going without looking outside. Velocity is only dened in a particular inertial frame. But acceleration is something that the people in the rocket can feel because they can feel the force. The oor of the rocket is pushing against them to accelerate them along with the ship and they feel that force in their bones. But it is the same in any inertial frame. Thus the passengers can tell how they are accelerating, but they cannot tell how fast they are going without looking out the window (or integrating the acceleration from the beginning of the trip). Scattering and kinematics The idea of scattering is very important in many subelds of science (and pseudo-sciences like economics for that matter). The idea is that one does not always have to follow the trajectories of all the particles in a process in detail to learn something about the process. Often, important information can be obtained by just looking at the initial state and the nal state, and not asking about the details of what happens in between. Here is an example. Suppose that we have two particles in three dimensional space interacting through a potential that depends only on the difference between the position vectors of the two particle. The energy is then m1 2 m2 2 r1 + r2 + V (r1 r2 ) (5) 2 2 We will discuss in more detail later in the course why such a system conserves energy and momentum. For now, just note that this potential energy leads to forces that are consistent with Newtons third law. The force on particle 1 is F1 = The force on particle 2 is F2 = V (r1 r2 ), V (r1 r2 ), V (r1 r2 ) x2 y2 z2 3 (7) V (r1 r2 ), V (r1 r2 ), V (r1 r2 ) x1 y1 z1 (6)

The chain rule implies that F1 = F2 , so that Newtons third law is satised, and momentum is conserved. Lets also assume that V is short-range which means that V (r) = 0 for large |r| (8)

or at least that V (r) goes to zero very rapidly as |r| . Even if we do not know what V looks like in detail, we can say interesting things about this system because energy and momentum are conserved. Now suppose that we consider a process in which particle 2 is at rest at the origin and particle 1 approaches from far away. Initially, the potential is irrelevant because the particles are far apart. Particle 1 has velocity v1i . After the interaction, the two particles will typically be far apart again, so again the potential will be irrelevant. The importance of the fact that the potential energy is irrelevant is that it means that the total kinetic energy long before the collision is the same as the total kinetic energy long after the collision. At some intermediate time, when the particles were close together, some kinetic energy was converted to potential, but it all comes back as the particles separate. Thus, as long as one only asks about the initial and nal states, kinetic energy is conserved. And of course, because Newtons third law is satised, momentum is conserved at all times, and in particular for the initial and nal states. This is a scattering process. We say that the two particle have scattered from one another. Now the point is that kinetic energy and momentum conservation put very strong constraints on this process. Suppose that particle 1 has velocity v1f after the interaction and particle 2 has velocity v2f . Since the initial momentum and energy of particle 2 are zero, we can write: m1 2 m1 2 m2 2 m1 v1i = m1 v1f + m2 v2f v1i = v1f + v (9) 2 2 2 2f These constraints are very powerful. If you dont know the mass of particle 2, for example, you can calculate it from the three velocities. Scattering gives you information about the particles involved. There is an interesting linguistic distinction that is made in calculations like this. We talk about the features that follow from very general principles like conservation of kinetic energy and momentum as the kinematics of the process. This is to be distinguished from the dynamics of the process, which is everything else in particular the details of the force law. At this point, the distinction probably seems a little arbitrary, but in the next couple of weeks, as we begin to see how general these conservations laws really are, this distinction will be more and more important. Another place where the idea of scattering is crucial is in my own eld of particle physics. I study particles that are very small. We can detect them, we can see their tracks, measure their velocities, and energies and momenta, just as we would with a larger object. But they are so small, that we cannot follow what happens when two of them collide in detail. We simply cannot measure the forces involved in the tiny fraction of a second during which colliding subatomic particles are in contact with one another.1 What we do is scattering experiments, in which we measure the initial energies and momenta of the particles before the collision, and then again after the collision. Here, conservation of energy and momentum are really useful, because they put very strong limits on what can happen. We will discuss this a bit now, and then in much more detail in a few weeks when we discuss energy and momentum in relativity.
In fact, the whole notion of these particles being in contact with one another is rather problematic. It is not clear what it means.
1

Elastic collisions A familiar example of the use of kinematics is in elastic collisions of rigid bodies, like billiard balls. The force in this case is certainly short-range, because it is only non-zero when the balls are actually touching. Elastic is just a code word meaning that kinetic energy is conserved. A famous and beautiful result that follows simply from conservation of kinetic energy and momentum in an elastic collision is that if a moving particle with velocity v collides elastically with a particle at rest with the same mass, the dot product of the velocities, v1 and v2 , of the two particles in the nal state vanish, v1 v2 = 0. Thus either one of the two velocities vanishes, or else the two velocity vectors are perpendicular to one another. This is very neat result, and it is easy to prove using conservation of kinetic energy and momentum. Conservation of kinetic energy gives 1 1 1 2 2 + m v2 m v 2 = m v1 2 2 2 Conservation of momentum gives m v = m v1 + m v2 Eliminating the ms and taking the dot product of each side of (11) with itself gives
2 2 v 2 = (v1 + v2 ) (v1 + v2 ) = v1 + v2 + 2 v1 v2

(10)

(11)

(12)

Comparing this with (10) gives the desired result. No forces were ever mentioned. In fact, it does not even matter here which of the two particles in the nal state was initially at rest and which was moving, because they have the same mass. There is another way of thinking about this result that is rather neat. Suppose that we look at the process in the zero momentum frame. We can get to this frame by moving all of our measuring apparatus with velocity v/2. In this new frame, particle that was moving now has velocity vCM = v/2 and the particle that was initially at rest has the opposite velocity, vCM = v/2 (14) (13)

so the sum of the momentum vectors is zero. After the collision, again the particles must be moving with equal and opposite velocities, and energy conservation requires that the speeds be the same as the initial speeds. That is all the particles can do is to change direction without changing speed. v1CM = v2CM with
2 2 = v1 vCM CM

(15)

Now we can go back to the original frame by just adding back the vCM from the motion of the frame. Then you can see that v1 = v1CM + vCM Then taking the dot product gives
2 2 v1 v2 = v1CM + vCM v1CM + vCM = v1 CM + v1CM = 0

v2 = v2CM + vCM = v1CM + vCM

(16)

(17)

Inelastic collisions One of the hard parts of doing physics is guring out what principles to use in a particular problem. At some level, for example, we believe that energy and momentum are always conserved. Sometimes, as in the example we just discussed, kinetic energy and momentum are obviously conserved. But for example, when I take an egg and drop in on the oor, it is certainly not obvious. Before it hits the oor, the egg has kinetic energy and momentum. After it hits the oor, it is just a scrambled mess, sitting still, with no kinetic energy or momentum. What happened? Clearly the problem with the eggs momentum is that the egg is not an isolated system. The oor pushed up on the eggs shell (and broke it), to change the eggs momentum. The problem with the eggs energy is that energy can get transformed from one form to another. In the process of breaking, the eggs parts actually heated up slightly, so slightly that we dont notice it, but enough so that energy is conserved. Frequently, we are interested in collisions in which momentum is conserved, but kinetic energy is not. These are called inelastic collisions. The classic inelastic collision is two lumps of clay hitting and sticking. If the two lumps have masses m1 and m2 with velocities v1 and v2 respectively, the nal momentum is m1 v1 + m2 v2 (18) We can now compute the nal velocity of the system by dividing by the total mass, vnal = m1 v1 + m2 v2 m1 + m2 (19)

There are two keys to obtaining (19). Notice that we have not used conservation of energy. What we used instead is the physical picture of the event. The key word is sticking. This means that the two lumps are moving with the same velocity after the collision. This allows us to use conservation of momentum alone to nd the nal velocity. There is also an unspoken assumption behind (19) the common sense statement that mass is conserved, like energy and momentum that the mass of the system of two lumps stuck together is just the sum of the masses of the two lumps. This is very reasonable, and it is consistent with what each of knows in our bones about the world. However, it is wrong. We will see in a few weeks that when particles collides at speeds close to the speed of light, conservation of mass may be completely wrong. Nevertheless, it is a very good approximation as long as none of the particles are moving at close to the speed of light, and because the speed of light is so enormous compared to what are used to, this is usually not much of a restriction. Since we havent used conservation of energy, it is of some interest to calculate how much energy is lost in the collision. This is m1 2 m2 2 m1 + m2 v + v 2 1 2 2 2 m1 v1 + m2 v2 m1 + m2
2

(v1 v2 )2 2

(20)

where is an important quantity called the reduced mass. We will discuss more of this later. Note that the energy loss never vanishes in this process unless the lumps were moving together in the rst place. Some energy is always lost whenever there is sticking.

The speed of a bullet We probably wont get to discuss this lin lecture. There is a classic physics demonstration in which one shoots a bullet into a block on wood which is the bob of a pendulum. By measuring the distance h the pendulum bob goes up, the mass M of the bob and the mass m bullet, you can infer the initial speed v of the bullet. I like this as an example of the use of conservation of energy and momentum because for this system, neither momentum, nor kinetic plus potential energy are actually conserved. Nevertheless, if you keep your wits about you, you can use conservation of energy and momentum to solve the problem.
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v
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.... .... ...... ........... . . . . . ..... ..... ...... ........... . . . . . ..... ..... ...... ........... . . . . . ..... ..... ...... ........... . . . . . ..... ..... ...... ........... . . . . . ...... ........... ... ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... . .
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M +m

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The analysis is deceptively simple. The initial momentum of the bullet is mv . If the bullet stops relatively quickly in the block of wood, it will still be moving almost horizontally when the bullet stops. And if the block moves very little during the short time the bullet is stopping, the pendulum will be hanging almost straight down and there will be almost no horizontal force on the bullet-bob system. Thus the horizontal component of the momentum of the bullet-bob system when the bullet stops with respect to the bob is still mv to a very good approximation. Since the mass is now 7

M + m, the velocity V of the bullet-bob system is approximately V = mv M +m (21)

Thus after the bullet has come to rest inside the bob, the kinetic energy of the bob+bullet system is 1 1 m2 v 2 E = (M + m)V 2 2 2M +m (22)

This is much smaller than the initial kinetic energy of the bullet, by a factor of m/(M + m). Most of the energy is lost to friction. But after the bullet comes to rest with respect to the bob, no more frictional forces operate, and energy is conserved. The kinetic energy in (22) is converted into potential energy as the bob rises, and the maximum height thus satises 1 m2 v 2 = (M + m)gh 2M +m or v= M +m 2gh m (23)