Object A has mass mA = 9 kg and initial momentum vector pA, i = < 20, -6, 0 > kg · m/s, just before it strikes object B, which has mass mB = 13 kg. Just before the collision object B has initial momentum vector pB, i = < 6, 6, 0 > kg · m/s. Consider a system consisting of both objects A and B. What is the total initial momentum of this system, just before the collision?

Explanation:

Momentum is a vector quantity that represents the "amount of motion" of an object.

Mathematically, the momentum of an object is given by

where

m is the mass of the object

v is the velocity

Since momentum is a vector, it also has a direction, which is the same as the velocity.

Therefore, if we have two objects, the total momentum of the two objects will be obtained from the vector sum of the individual momenta of the two objects.

In this problem we have:

is the momentum of object A

is the momentum of object B

Therefore, the total momentum of objects A and B can be obtained by adding each components of A to the corresponding component of B, so:

So the total initial momentum is