if I go down a slide but instead of carrying on to the end, I grip the sides and stop myself: where does my momentum go?

Question

I had crap science teachers so forces in physics never really made sense to me. I understand that my momentum has a kind of energy to it…so if I stop myself on the slide where does that energy go?

In: 9

Answer 1

All these answers about heat and sound are wrong.

In a theoretical, ideal scenario, momentum is conserved and simply transferred between objects in a system. In our case, our system includes you, the slide, and the rest of the earth. So when stopping yourself, your momentum is being transferred first to the slide and subsequently to the whole earth. In this ideal scenario, this is no different from just landing from a jump.

Because real life is messy, *some* of this momentum is lost due to heat and sound. Only some, though. Most of the momentum is just transferred to the earth, but since the earth is relatively ginormous, this has no measurable effect.