acestein

I know what the pythagorean theorem is, however, i have added the vectors together before and have received the wrong answer. Now i understand why. I wasn't using the pythagorean theorem. I know how to use it, I just wasn't taught to solve this problem with the pythagorean method before.

Envision a minor motor-vehicle accident. Car X backs out of a parking space at 1.000m/s toward the east. Car Y, whose driver searches for a place to park, travels north at 1.000m/s. Neither driver sees the other car, and the cars collide. Suppose that each car (including its driver) has a mass of 1000kg. The total system momentum vector before the collision is approximately? a) 1000kg x m/s toward the northeast. b) 1414 kg x m/s toward the northeast. c) 2000kg x m/s toward the northeast. d) zero, because the vehicles haven't hit each other yet! My text book has been teaching me with formulas of momentum. However, when i attempted it by finding the momenutm of each object and then adding them together i got 2000kg x m/s toward the northeast. What am i doing wrong? some people have told me to use the triangle method, but i haven't been taught that way yet. Does this question involve p=mv?