Yesterday, Nikki had understood the concept of Inertia.
Next day, when she was playing with her toy car, she noticed that when she pushed it hard, it went really far. But when she pushed it gently, it didn’t go very far at all.
Nikki’s father saw her playing and he explained to her that when she pushed the car hard, it had something called momentum.
Momentum is like a magic power that makes things keep moving when they’re already moving. It’s like when you’re on a swing and you keep going back and forth even when you stop pushing.
The father told Nikki that momentum is made up of two things: mass and speed. Mass is how heavy something is, and speed is how fast it’s going. So when Nikki pushed the car hard, it had more momentum because it was heavier and going faster.
Nikki thought this was really cool! She started pushing her car harder and harder to see how far she could make it go. And every time she did, she felt like she had a little bit of magic power too.
Short stories for kids 