〈 Berger | Dillon 〉

:'(

If I’m remembering correctly, it was the momentum equation at Newton presented in Principia, but he called “momentum” the “quality of motion”. To be fair, he was probably hopped up on Mercury and figs...

I think he called it the "quantity of motion"

An important generalisation to the case of a point of variable mass is the "Tsiolkovsky rocket equation". Note that it is fully classical, and the Newton's law holds as such (although not in the form F=ma, of course). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation …

By the way, this *is* rocket science. Just so you know. :)

I've always been curious about something: is there a reason the derivative of the kinetic energy for a point mass (1/2 mv^2) with respect to v yields mv, which is the definition of linear momentum?

Kinetic energy change with respect to velocity (or resistance to such a change) sounds like another way to describe inertia, which is what momentum describes? I’m not a physicist, just spitballing