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NEWTON’S LAWS OF MOTION

APPLICATION
I. general WORD
PROBLEM Harry is practicing for his upcoming competition in swimming for Palarong Pambansa.
When his coach measures his acceleration, he begins to accelerate from rest to 75
cm/s in 0.75 seconds. With his known mass of 56 kilograms, answer the following:
a. Identify the action reaction pair.
b. Determine the acceleration of Harry.
c. Determine the net force the wall exerts on Harry.
d. Determine the net force Harry exerts on the wall.
e. Determine the net force Harry exerted when he abruptly made a backward
movement in the pool with a constant acceleration after completing the first
course.

II.
NEWTON’S LAW OF ACCELERATION
ILLUSTRATIO 2 LAW ND

N The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force
F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors; in this law the direction of the force
vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.
In short, force is equal to mass times acceleration.
F = ma

This is when Harry begins to accelerate from rest (his initial jump off into the pool) to
75 cm/s.
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NEWTON’S LAW OF INTERACTION
3RD LAW
“For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.”
This is when Harry pushes off his feet unto the wall of the pool after completing the first
course making him go forward to the left and the wall exerts the same and opposite force
on Harry to the right.

NEWTON’S LAW OF INERTIA

1ST LAW
“An object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at
rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”
This is when Harry makes a backward movement on the pool with a constant
acceleration.
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III.
DISCUSSIO We are going to approach this situation based from the initial movement of Harry
thus, when he starts to jump off into the pool and start to accelerate from rest to 75 cm/s
N(2 Law) to the moment he pushes off his feet unto the wall after completing the first
nd

course and the wall exerts the same force on Harry (3 rd Law) thus, allowing him to make
a return movement (backward movement) on the pool (1 st Law). Therefore, we are going
to discuss the Newton’s Laws that Harry applied during his practice on swimming.
We are now very familiar with Newton’s Laws of Motion and how it can be applied
to our everyday life (without us noticing it).

1 Harry jumped off first from the, thus, from rest, and starts to accelerate to 75
cm/s. The first Newton’s Law here is the Newton’s 2 nd Law – the Law of Acceleration.
Recall that Law of Acceleration is F = ma (Force is equal to mass times acceleration).
Now, let’s define Acceleration. Acceleration is a measurement of how quickly an object
is changing speed. Refer to the illustration above, Harry starts to accelerate from rest
(when he jumped off into the pool and is indicated by an arrow) to 75 cm/s (also
indicated by an arrow) which implies that what he did is measurement of how quickly
he is changing speed. Next, let’s tackle this F = ma for you. F = ma basically means
that the force of the object comes from its mass and its acceleration. Therefore, we
can conclude that if his mass is more than 56, it’ll be hard for him to move against the
water current and vice versa. With his mass of 56 kg., we can determine if his
acceleration of 75 cm/s is enough to make him win the competition. In other words,
with his known mass, we can know if he is changing speed very quickly, thus, causing
him to produce a great force. With his known mass, we can know if he’s changing
speed slowly, thus, will cause him to make a weak force (that’ll probably make him
lose the competition!).

2 Enough with Newton’s 2nd Law, now, we are going to discuss about Harry’s
backward movement (or when he pushes off his feet unto the wall of the pool after
completing the first course and the wall exerts the same force on Harry). Isn’t
amazing?
This time, the Newton’s Law here is Newton’s 3 rd Law – the Law of Interaction (action
reaction). Recall that Law of Interaction states “for every action, there is an opposite
and equal reaction.” For every force acting on an object, there is an equal force acting
in the opposite direction. A very good example here is what you’re doing right now.
Guess what? Gravity is pulling you down in your seat but there’s Newton’s 3 rd Law
telling us your seat is pushing you up against you with equal force. That’s why you
aren’t moving!
As you can see in the illustration, when Harry reach the end of the pool, he tend to
push off his feet against the wall making him slide off his body away from the wall and
forward (Harry pushed on the wall to the left) and the wall pushed back on Harry with
equal and opposite force to the right. The harder he pushed off his feet against the
wall, the more force the wall exerts back on him.
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3 Enough with Newton’s 2nd and 3rd Laws. We are now going tackle about how
Newton’s 1st Law of Motion happened here.
Recall that Newton’s 1st Law states that “an object in motion tends to stay in motion
and an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced
force.”
It is described that Harry makes a backward movement in the pool with a constant
acceleration after completing the first course. If he’s going to be that way constantly
and there would be no changes in the rate of his speed, then there would be no
acceleration that will happen.
Harry in that state of motion will remain in that state of motion unless there is an
external force that’ll react. However, since Harry’s motion is described as having a
constant acceleration which is a uniform state, then there are no external forces. In
other words, it is up to him if he’s going to make a stop on his own.

Physics is truly amazing!

IV.
STRATEGY
We are now going to answer the questions above.
TO SOLVE
a. Identify the action reaction pair.
THE rd
The key to find the force involved in 3 Law of motion is to first identify the action reaction
pair. So the action reaction pair is the force Harry exerted on the wall and the force the
PROBLEM
wall exerted on Harry.
b. Determine the acceleration of Harry.
If your goal is to find the force Harry exerted on the wall and vice versa, and if you find
one, you’ll know the magnitude because they are opposite, you’re just going to change the
direction. So, you must find first the acceleration of Harry. If you know the acceleration of
Harry, you’ll know the forces. Remember that Harry’s velocity is in cm/s. So we must
change it into m/s.
75 cm 1m
Thus, 75 cm/s = 0.75 m/s 1 m = 100 cm x =0.75 m/ s
1 m 100 cm
Now, get the acceleration.
V f −V i
a= where; Vf (final velocity) = 0.75 m/s
t
Vi (initial velocity which is at rest) = 0 m/s

m
0.75 −0 m/s
s
a=
0.75 s
0.75 m/ s
a=
0.75 s

a=1 m/s2
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c. Determine the net force the wall exerts on Harry.

To continue what I have been saying, you are going to determine the forces acting on the
action reaction pair if you first find the acceleration. Now, the acceleration is determined
which is 1 m/s2. Now, we are going to determine the first pair of action reaction which is the
force the wall exerts on Harry by using Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion.
Our first pair of action reaction is the force the wall exerts on Harry because that will cause
Harry to accelerate 1 m/s to the right (refer to the illustration of Newton’s 3 rd Law of Motion).
Now, let’s find the net force by using Newton’s 2 nd Law of Motion. This is going to be easy
since there are no external forces acting on either of the two pairs.
where; m = mass
F=ma
a = acceleration

F=( 56 kg ) (1m/ s2 ) The unit of force is Newton

(N)
F=56 N ¿ the ¿
d. Determine the net force Harry exerts on the wall.
Now, we already determined the force of the wall on Harry. We can now also determine the
force of Harry on the wall since Newton’s 3 rd Law says, “for every action, there is an
OPPOSITE and EQUAL REACTION”!
F=ma

F=( 56 kg ) (1m/ s2 )
F=56 N ¿ the¿
e. Determine the net force Harry exerted when he abruptly made a backward
movement in the pool with a constant acceleration after completing the first course.
Recall Newton's 1st Law of Motion “an object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object
at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an unbalanced force”. So in this case,
Harry will remain in his state of motion unless acted upon by an external force. Harry’s
motion is described as having a constant acceleration which is a uniform state so there are
no external forces. In other words, it is up to him if he’s going to make a stop. It’s going to be
his BRAIN!
Harry moves at a constant velocity (no acceleration), so there is no net force.
F=ma

F=( 56 kg ) (0 m/s 2)
F=0 N