Car a with a mass of 725 kilograms is traveling east at an initial velocity of 15 meters/second. it collides head–on with car b, which has a mass of 625 kilograms and is traveling west at an initial velocity of 17 meters/second. find the total momentum of the system after collision.

Explanation:

The total momentum of a system is defined by:

Where,

is the total momentum or it could be expressed also as .

and represents the masses of the objects interacting in the system.

and are the velocities of the objects of the system.

Remember: The momentum is a fundamental physical magnitude of vector type.

We have:

We are going to take the east side as positive, and the west side as negative. Then the velocity of the car B, has to be negative. It goes in a different direction from car A.

Then the total momentum of the system is: