Is calculating the value for momentum rare in practical applications?

[vco]

Recently I started wondering why there seems to be so few practical/engineering applications where you need to calculate the momentum of something. I must emphasize that I don't mean usage of the concept of momentum or the law of conservation of momentum, but the value of the quantity itself.

Momentum is a conserved quantity like energy and charge, but it appears you rarely need to calculate an explicit value for it in practice. On the other hand, there is a plethora of practical/engineering applications where one needs to calculate the energy or charge of something.

I'm a mechanical engineer myself, and I don't think I've ever had to calculate the momentum of anything in the working life. I've worked quite a lot with engineering simulation programs, and to my knowledge none of them even offer momentum (or anything related to it) as an output quantity.

Do you agree? I find this very interesting since momentum is such a fundamental concept.

 

[anorlunda]

Partially it is a matter of semantics. Newton's 2nd law f=ma can be expressed as:

$f=m\ddot x$

or as two first order equations.

$p=m\dot x$
$f=\dot p$

They say the same thing, but the first expression does not explicitly mention momentum while the second one does.

 

[Lnewqban]

It is commonly used in reconstruction and analysis of traffic and aviation accidents, as well as in some types of forensic engineering investigations.
Please, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_reconstruction