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Newton's Three Laws of Motion
Newton's Three Laws of Motion
He was born in England on December 25, 1643. He was born the same year that Galileo died. He lived for 85 years. Isaac Newton was raised by his grandmother. He attended Free Grammar School and then went on to Trinity College Cambridge. Newton worked his way through college. While at college he became interested in math, physics, and astronomy. Newton received both a bachelors and masters degree. While Newton was in college he was writing his ideas in a journal. Newton had new ideas about motion, which he called his three laws of motion. He also had ideas about gravity, the diffraction of light, and forces. Newton's ideas were so good that Queen Anne knighted him in 1705. His accomplishments laid the foundations for modern science and revolutionized the world. Sir Isaac Newton died in 1727. In this lesson you will develop an understanding of each of Newton's Three Laws of Motion.
This means that there is a natural tendency of objects to keep on doing what they're doing. All objects resist changes in their state of motion. In the absence of an unbalanced force, an object in motion will maintain this state of motion.
What is the motion in this picture? What is the unbalanced force in this picture? What happened to the skater in this picture?
This law is the same reason why you should always wear your seatbelt.
Now that you understand Newton's First Law of Motion, let's go on to his Second Law of Motion.
Everyone unconsiously knows the Second Law. Everyone knows that heavier objects require more force to move the same distance as lighter objects.
However, the Second Law gives us an exact relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. It can be expressed as a mathematical equation:
Mike's car, which weighs 1,000 kg, is out of gas. Mike is trying to push the car to a gas station, and he makes the car go 0.05 m/s/s. Using Newton's Second Law, you can compute how much force Mike is applying to the car.
Answer = 50 newtons
This means that for every force there is a reaction force that is equal in size, but opposite in direction. That is to say that whenever an object pushes another object it gets pushed back in the opposite direction equally hard.
The rocket's action is to push down on the ground with the force of its powerful engines, and the reaction is that the ground pushes the rocket upwards with an equal force.