1- If you hold a horizontal metal bar several inches above the ground and move it across the grass,

each blade of grass bends along the way. If you increase the speed of the bar, each blade of grass
will bend more quickly. If so, how does a rotary mower cut grass? How do you exert enough force on
a blade of grass to cut it?
A portion of each blade of grass extends above the metal bar. This portion must be sped up so the
blade bends out of the way. If the bar is moving fast enough, the grass will not have time to increase
its speed to match the speed of the bar. The mass of the blade is small, but when its acceleration is
very large, the force exerted by the bar on the blade puts the blade in tension large enough to cut it.
2- Your hands are wet and the bathroom towel dispenser is empty. What do you do to remove water
droplets from your hands? How does your action exemplify one of Newton's laws? Which one of
them?
When the hands are shaken, there is a large acceleration of the surfaces of the hands. If water
droplets remain on your hands, they should accelerate together with your hands. The only force that
can provide this acceleration is the friction force between the water and your hands.
(There are also adhesive forces, but let's not worry about that.)
The force of static friction is not large enough to keep the water still relative to the skin at this large
acceleration. Therefore, water is released and slides along the surface of the skin. Finally, the water
reaches the end of a finger and then slides into the air. This is an example of Newton's first law in
action where the drops continue in motion while the hand is stopped.
3- If a car travels west with a constant speed of 20 m/s, what is the resultant force acting on it?
The resultant force is zero, since the acceleration is zero.
4- A passenger sitting in the back of a bus claims she was injured when the driver slammed on the
brakes, causing a suitcase to fly toward her from the front of the bus. If you were the judge in this
case, what sentence would you make? Because?
First ask: "Was the bus moving forward or backward?"
If it moved forward, the passenger is lying. A quick stop would cause the suitcase to fly toward the
front of the bus, not the back. If the bus was reversing at a reasonable speed, a sudden stop couldn't
cause a suitcase to fly very far. The fine for malicious litigation.
5- Twenty people participate in a rope-pulling contest. The two ten-person teams are so evenly
distributed that neither team wins. After the game, the participants notice that a car is stuck in the
mud. They attach the game rope to the bumper of the car and all the people pull the rope. The heavy
car barely moves a couple of decimeters when the rope breaks. Why does it break in this situation,
but not when the same twenty people were pulling on it during the game?
The tension on the rope when pulling the car is twice that of towing war. One would consider the car
to behave like another team of twenty people.
6- Can an object exert a force on itself? Explain your answer.
An object cannot exert a force on itself to cause acceleration. If it could, then objects could
accelerate themselves, without interacting with the environment. You can't pull yourself up by your
boots.
7- When you push on a box with a force of 200 N instead of a force of 50 N, you may feel more effort.
 When a table exerts an upward normal force of 200 N instead of one of smaller magnitude, does the
table really do anything differently?
Yeah. The table is tilted more to exert a greater upward force. Warping is easy to see for a plastic
foam block.
8- An athlete holds a light rope that passes over a frictionless pulley attached to the ceiling of a gym. A
sandbag precisely equal in weight to the athlete is tied to the other end of the rope. Both the bag and
the athlete are at rest at the beginning. The athlete climbs the rope, sometimes accelerating and
braking as he does so. What happens to the sandbag? Explain.
The sandbag moves upward with the athlete, no matter how fast the athlete climbs. Since the athlete
and the sandbag have the same weight, the acceleration of the system must be zero.
9- Describe two examples in which the friction force exerted on an object is in the direction of motion of
the object.
When driving away from a traffic light, the friction exerted by the ground on the car's tires
accelerates the car's progress.
When you start running from rest, the friction exerted by the ground on your shoes causes your
acceleration.
10- Give reasons for the answers to each of the following questions: (a) Can a normal force be
horizontal? (b) Can a normal force be directed vertically downward? (c) Consider a tennis ball in
contact with a fixed ground and nothing else. Can the normal force be different in magnitude from
the gravitational force exerted on the ball? (d) Can the force that the ground exerts on the ball be
different in magnitude from the force that the ball exerts on the ground?
(a) Yes, as a vertical wall exerts on a ladder leaning against it.
(b) Yes, as exerted by a hammer driving a tent stake into the ground.
(c) Yes, as the ball accelerates upward by bouncing off the ground.
(d) No; The two forces describe the same interaction.

11- Identify action-reaction pairs in the following situations: (a) A man takes a step. (b) A snowball hits a
girl on the back. (c) A baseball player catches a ball. (d) A gust of wind hits a window.
(a) When a man takes a step, the action is the force that his foot exerts on the Earth; The reaction is
the force of the earth on your foot.
(b) The action is the force exerted on the girl's back by the snowball; The reaction is the force
exerted on the snowball by the girl's back.
(c) The action is the force of the glove on the ball; The reaction is the force of the ball on the glove.
(d) Action is the force exerted on the window by the air molecules; The reaction is the force on the
air molecules exerted by the window. We could in each case interchange the terms "action" and
"reaction."

12- What forces cause (a) a car, (b) a propeller-driven airplane, and (c) a rowboat to move?
(a) Friction, whether static or kinetic, exerted by the road where it meets the rubber tires accelerates
the car forward and then maintains its speed by counteracting resistance forces.
 (b) The air around the propeller pushes forward on its blades. The evidence is that the propeller
blade pushes air toward the back of the plane.
(c) The water pushes the oar blade toward the bow. The evidence is that the oar blade pushes the
water toward the stern.

13- An object executes circular motion with constant speed whenever a net force of constant magnitude
acts perpendicular to the speed. What happens to the speed if the force is not perpendicular to the
speed?
The speed changes. The tangential force component causes tangential acceleration.
14- A bucket of water can be rotated in a vertical path such that no water is spilled. Why does water stay
in the bucket, even when the bucket is on your head?
Water has inertia. Water tends to move along a straight line, but the bucket pushes it around in a
circle.
15- The airbag in a car inflates when a collision occurs, preventing injury to the passenger. Why does
the airbag cushion the blow? Discuss the physics involved.
The passenger must suffer a certain change in momentum in the collision.
This means that a certain impulse must be exerted on the passenger by the steering wheel, the
window, an airbag or something like that. By increasing the distance over which the change in
momentum occurs, the time interval over which this change occurs also increases, resulting in the
force on the passenger.
16- Does a larger net force exerted on an object always produce a larger change in the object's
momentum compared to a smaller net force? Explain.
No. The impulse depends on the force and the time interval during which it is applied.
17- Does a larger net force always produce a larger change in kinetic energy than a smaller net force?
Explain.
No. Work depends on the force and the displacement on which it acts.
18- Is it possible to change the translational kinetic energy of an object without changing its rotational
energy? Yeah. For any object acted on by a net force, but without torque, the translational kinetic
energy will change, but the rotational kinetic energy will not.

For example, if you drop an object, it will gain translational kinetic energy due to the work done on
the object by the gravitational force.
Any rotational kinetic energy the object has is not affected by its fall.
19- Must an object be rotating to have a non-zero moment of inertia?
No, just as an object does not need to move to have mass.
20- Suppose only two external forces act on a rigid object at rest and the two forces are equal in
magnitude and opposite in direction. Under what conditions does the object start to rotate? If the
object is free to rotate about any axis, the object will begin to rotate if the two forces act along
different lines of action. Then the pairs of forces will not be equal in magnitude and opposite in
direction.
21- Explain why changing the axis of rotation of an object changes its moment of inertia. The moment of
inertia depends on the distribution of mass with respect to a given axis.
If the axis is changed, then each bit of mass that makes up the object is at a different distance from
the axis than before. Compare the moments of inertia of a uniform rigid bar about axes
perpendicular to the bar, first passing through its center of mass and then passing through one end.
For example, if you repeatedly move a metric back and forth about an axis that passes through its
center of mass, you will find that it doesn't take much effort to reverse the direction of rotation.
However, if you move the shaft to one end, you will have a harder time moving the lever back and
forth. The moment of inertia about the end is much greater, because much of the mass of the bar is
farther from the axis.
22- If you see a rotating object, is there necessarily a net torque acting on it? No, only if its angular
velocity changes.
23- If the torque acting on a particle about an axis through a certain origin is zero, what can you say
about its angular momentum about that axis?
Its angular momentum about that axis is constant in time. Nothing can be concluded about the
magnitude of the angular momentum.
24- Can an object be in equilibrium if it is in motion? Explain Yes you can. When the speed is constant.
25- Why do airplane pilots prefer to take off with the plane into the wind?
When taking off into the wind, the increased airspeed over the wings provides greater lift force,
allowing the pilot to take off on a shorter runway.
26- It is common for the water supply for a city to occur through high tanks above the ground. Water
flows from the tank, through pipes, to the tap at home. Why does water flow faster from the faucet
on the first floor of a building than in an upper-floor apartment?
At a lower elevation, the water pressure is greater because the pressure increases with increasing
depth below the surface of the water in the reservoir (or water tower).