Virtual Lab Manual

Forces and Free-Body Diagrams:

Learn how to navigate a drone
Synopsis
Get ready to train before entering the engineering lab
You move as a result of forces acting upon you. In this simulation, you will learn the basics
of common forces as you experience them in your everyday life. You will visualize the
reaction of an object in a given condition using the free-body diagrams.

Deriving the net force in one direction

Dr. One, our AI lab assistant, changed a few parts in her engine. These changes affected how
she moved and now she needs your help to optimize her flying! In the process, you will
determine the center of mass and gravity and learn the basic steps of creating a free-body
diagram in a one-dimensional problem.

Free-body diagrams for common forces

To identify the motion of an object, you first have to identify all the external forces that are
exerted on it. In the forces and free-body diagrams simulation, you will create free body
diagrams for a mass attached to a spring, a mass being underwater and a mass rolling
down a hill. Change the magnitude of these forces – how will they affect the motion of the
mass?

A free-body diagram with force components

By the end, you will understand how to resolve a force into components and evaluate the
motion of an object when forces are applied to it in multiple directions. Will you be able to
navigate a drone with two motors?

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Learning Objectives
At the end of this simulation, you will be able to…
● Draw and interpret free-body force diagrams to represent forces
● Understand the concept of center of gravity of an extended body
● Determine the net force exerted to a particle

Techniques in Lab
● Free body diagrams

Theory
Common forces
When you push or pull an object you apply a force on that item. Forces are commonly
categorized relating to their source, how they are transmitted, or their effects. In this page,
we will discuss some of the most common forces. These forces are usually responsible for
the motion of the objects as expressed in the Newton's Laws of Motion. External forces are
any outside forces that act on a body. A free-body diagram is a drawing of all external
forces acting on a body and when the forces on a system are balanced then the system is
in equilibrium. The SI unit of force is the newton (N), N = kg·m/s2.

Normal Force
In simple words, the normal force is a force that prevents your computer from sinking
through the table that it is sitting on. The normal force is supporting the weight of an
object, or a load, and is perpendicular to the surface of contact between the load and its
support. This force is given by the symbol N. The word normal means perpendicular to a
surface.

Weight
The force acting on an object due to gravitation is called weight.

Friction
Friction is a resistive force opposing the motion or the tendency of an object to move.

Spring force
Spring is a medium that has the ability to restore its shape, if deformed. To restore its
shape, a spring exerts a restoring force that is proportional to and in the opposite direction
in which it is stretched or compressed. This is the statement of a law known as Hooke’s
law.

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Figure 1: Common forces applied to an object in motion (FG is the weight, fk is the kinetic
friction, N is the normal force and F is the pushing force)

Net external forces

The vector sum of all external forces acting on an object or system is called the net
external force Fnet and is also represented as ΣF.

For every object, we may determine the net force (both magnitude and direction) using the
free-body diagram process. The net force is expressed in every direction separately. For the
case of the vertical motion of a mass on a spring we take into consideration the forces on
the y-direction as follows (forces that act only on the x-axis and have no effect on the
y-direction are not responsible for the movement of a mass at the vertical direction):

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Figure 2: Two forces applied to a body in the first image. Net force pointing downwards on
the y-axis in the second image (ΣF=FG-FLifting=10N).

Contact and Field forces

Forces can be grouped into two categories; contact forces and field forces. Contact forces
are due to direct physical contact between objects. For example, the restoring force from a
spring to the attached mass. Field forces, however, act without the necessity of physical
contact between objects and they depend on the presence of a “field” in the region of
space surrounding the body under consideration. Since the mass is in Earth’s gravitational
field, it feels a gravitational force; in other words, he has weight.

Figure 3: The restoring force (contact force) and weight (field force) of a mass on a spring.

Friction
When a body is in motion, it often experiences resistance because the body interacts with
its surroundings. Consider the case of sliding down a sandy hill compared to an icy
mountain. The resistance you experience from the sand is a force of friction. You can read
more about the microscopic phenomena of forces responsible for this difference.

Friction opposes relative motion between systems in contact. Friction is a common yet
complex force. The direction of the friction is always opposite that of motion, parallel to
the surface between objects, and perpendicular to the normal force. An object can
experience both static and kinetic friction.

Center of mass
The center of mass is the average position of all the parts of one system, weighted
according to their masses. Take the example of an apple. An apple has many parts, the leaf,
the peel, the seeds, etc. Consider the weight of all these parts and try to describe their
distance from one point in the center. This point is the unique position at which the
weighted position vectors of all the parts of a system sum up to zero. The position of the
center of mass has units of meters. There does not have to be any actual material from the

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object at the center of mass. Consider the case of a donut; the center of the mass is
located where the hole is in the middle, or the case of a balloon, where the center of mass
is in the middle where only air exists.

Figure 4: The center of mass of an apple.

Center of gravity
In many equilibrium situations, one of the forces acting on the body is its weight. In
free-body diagrams, the weight vector is attached to the center of gravity of the body. The
center of gravity and the center of mass may be located at different points only in
situations where a body is so huge that the gravitational field is non-uniform throughout its
volume. In practical situations, however, even objects as large as buildings that are located
in a uniform gravitational field on Earth’s surface, the center of gravity is identical to the
center of mass.

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Figure 5: The center of mass and gravity in a uniform and non-uniform field.

Free-body diagrams
External forces are any outside forces that act on a body. A free-body diagram is a drawing
of all external forces acting on a body. A free-body diagram of a body and the forces
exerted to it will help you describe and analyze most phenomena in physics. Newton's laws
of motion can be applied easily to bodies at rest, equilibrium or accelerating, as soon as the
free-body diagrams of these bodies have been created.

There are certain rules to take into consideration when constructing a free-body diagram:
● If you are treating the object as a particle (no size or shape and no rotation),
represent the object as a point. We often place this point at the origin of an
xy-coordinate system.
● Include all forces that act on the object, representing these forces as vectors.
Consider the types of forces.
● Do not include the net force on the object.
● Forces that the object exerts on its environment must not be included. We never
include both forces of an action-reaction pair.
● Convert the free-body diagram into a more detailed diagram showing the x- and
y-components of a given force.
● If there are two or more objects, or bodies, in the problem, draw a separate
free-body diagram for each object.

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Figure 6: Steps to create free-body diagrams.

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