We feel the effects of Newton's first law every day. But we usually do not notice them because other forces interfere. In space, the first law is much more obvious. Objects will follow their natural trajectories until they are stopped by an outside force. To set an example we can somewhat understand what is meant by this by building an example.
Since Newtons First Law is less abstract and genuinely interconnected with the other laws addressed by him I will move on to the Second law of Motion.
Newton's 2nd Law is easily expressed by an equation: A=F/M or F=MA.
The Second Law governs all acceleration and is really very simple -- Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. The greater the mass (of the object being accelerated) the greater the amount of force needed (to accelerate the object).The Second Law gives us an exact relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. The list above is an example of how Newton's Second Law works: (A=F/M or F=M*A) A being acceleration(twenty-five feet per-second) F being the force used(unknown:may be known by the manufacturer at this point) and M being the mass of the object(one pound). We would use the formula F=M*A and in doing so we would come up with this answer:F(Force)= 25 Newtons
The Third Law at first seems simple, but is a very important law. Everytime we interact with our surroundings we feel the Third Law. When you punch someone in the face your hand not only applies a force to the person's face, the person's face applies a force to your hand. Since the person's face is softer than your hand it suffers more from the interaction. The Third Law is very important for space travel. In the cold void of space their is no air for jets to suck or for propellers to churn, and yet space ships can manouver in a vacuum. How do they do it? The engines propel gas particles out the back of the space ship. Since every force has an equal and opposite force, the space ship will be proppeled forwards. Because of the First Law, space ships do not need very much fuel -- once they are moving they will stay in motion. This law can get overly complex when all factors are calculated but to keep it simple we will not consider factors that do not play a massive role in the "action, oposite and equal re-action law." Let's do an example to keep it fun!
First I would like to determine how far she goes per second. (just cause) I can find this out by this formula d/ps=1.5/30(d/ps is distance per second) I come up with .05 meters per/sec .
Next I will use Newtons Second Law Formula in this manner(they are interchangeable, depending on what info. you have) Force= Acceleration times Mass. We know the weight of the car and the speed it is pushed per/sec so the first formula would look like this: F=.05 m/s * 1000 kg : : : Force=50 Newtons and in turn can use this formula to solve how far the car pushed her Well..... almost we gotta find out her weight so lets ask her.......after 10 seconds of silence she replies "125 pounds". Thanks to Sonja(my wife) we have the missing element, but I want to convert it to kilograms(after looking up a conversion chart) We know that 1# is .45 kilograms and thus 125# equals 56.82 kilograms. Now we use Newtons law to determine how far she was pushed while the van(weighing much more than her) was pushed .05 meters in one second. Here are the steps:
So.... She was pushed 1.76 meters in one second while the car was pushed only .05 meters. This concludes my web page that got out of hand(massively... I wonder if you read all this Carl????!!!!) I think that I have learned alot about Newtonian physics although that is not the reason for this page! In laymen terms Newtons 3rd Law is stated like this- "Every Action has an equal and opposite re-action!"
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