Im having a hard time understanding momentum with people defining it in terms that don’t really explain what it is. I think that getting a feel of what the unit for momentum is might help me
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As many other have said, momentum is a vector given by mass times velocity and it gives you an indication on how hard it is to stop (or accelerate) something with a specific momentum.
What I still haven’t found in the comments is that there is a relationship between momentum and force.
If you want to stop an object with 100kgm/s momentum in 1 second you have to exert a force of 100N. Dividing momentum by time you get a force. And multiplying a force by time you get a momentum (in the same exact way you can switch from acceleration to velocity).
I don’t know if it would still be ELI5, but from a more rigorous standpoint, force is defined as the derivative of momentum.
While in most cases this information is pointless, it becomes very important when studying rocket motion and there’s variation in momentum due to the heavy fuel consumption (and subsequent mass reduction) during the flight.
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