Question

The mass of a cannon is $500kg$ and it recoils with a speed of $0.25m/s$ . What is the momentum of the cannon?

Answer 1

The mass of the ejected body and the mass of the recoiling body are related to one another by the law of conservation of momentum. It is obtained from Newton’s laws of motion. Recoiling velocity is an example of this law. From the law, we get that the momentum of the cannon and the gun are equal.

Complete answer:
Recoil velocity is the backward velocity experienced by a shooter when one shoots a bullet. Due to the recoil velocity, the shooter gets a backward jerk. The recoil velocity is because of the result of the conservation of linear momentum of the system. All projection systems experience a recoil velocity whether it is gun, bow, and arrow, rocket launchers, or cannons
The initial momentum of the system (Cannon and bullet )=$0$
The final momentum of the system is obtained by adding the momentum of the Cannon and the momentum of the bullet
Mass of the cannon $m = 500kg$
Recoil speed $v = {\text{ }}0.25{\text{ }}m/s$
And we have to find:
Momentum=?
So, we know that
by applying the formula Momentum $P = {\text{ m }} \times {\text{ v}}$
we get Momentum = $500{\text{ }} \times {\text{ }}0.25$
Momentum $P = {\text{ }}125{\text{ }}kg{\text{ }}m/s$.
Therefore, the momentum of the cannon is ${\text{ }}125{\text{ }}kg{\text{ }}m/s$

Note: In this Law of Conservation of momentum we consider the mass to be negligibly small and also the cannon Recoil velocity will be negative because it is in the opposite direction of the Bullet that is traveling at a very faster rate. To consider this an ideal case because no external forces are acting on a system, so this law holds good. The energy gained during this bombardment is known as recoil energy.