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<< Raacc@aol.com says:
...
It seems to me that velocity should be introduced followed immediately by
momentum. Then acceleration and net force can be defined as the slopes of
the velocity and momentum graphs respectively.)
...
As far as justification, I don't see why you need any. If you were teaching
someone English, and showed them an orange, you would say this is an orange.
What would be your justification? Why do we call an orange and orange? Of
course, you could go into the lingual history of the word, but is this
important? Physics has a terminology and momentum is one of the terms. Why
is momentum mv and not m^2v? Because we don't define it to be m^2v, we
define it to be mv.
When introducing acceleration, I define it as the slope of a velocity versus
time graph. If momentum had already been introduced it would then be just as
easy to define force as the slope of a momentum versus time graph. From a
graphical view, wouldn't discussing force before momentum be the same as
discussing acceleration before velocity?