  In the 14th century the French thinker John Buridan developed a theory of
motion that bears a strong resemblance to Newtonian momentum. Buridan's ideas
include a quantity of motion which is determined by an object's mass, speed,
and direction; in the absence of resistive effects, this quantity remains with
the object. Buridan's work is an interesting story in the history of physics.
Buridan's insights have value for introducing concepts of inertia and momentum
to physics students.
