After this lesson, you should be able to:

• Explain why impulse is associated with collisions
• Define impulse as the product of net force and contact time (duration of collision)
• Understand that Newton’s second law can be also expressed in terms of impulse, the impulse-momentum theorem
• Represent impulse as a vector
• Use the impulse-momentum theorem in problem solving to determine the

• average force involved in a collision
• time of collision
• change in momentum