Newton’s Law of Motion

Background

• Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) an English scientist and

mathematician famous for his discovery of the law of gravity
also discovered the three laws of motion.
• He published them in his book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica (mathematic principles of natural philosophy) in
1687.
• Today these laws are known as Newton’s Laws of Motion and
describe the motion of all objects on the scale we experience in
our everyday lives.
“If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been
owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.”
-Sir Isaac Newton
 Newton’s Laws of Motion

1. 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.
2. Force equals mass times acceleration
(F = ma).
3. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
 Newton’s First Law

An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in

motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an
unbalanced force.
What does this mean?

• Basically, an object will “keep doing what it was doing”

unless acted on by an unbalanced force.

• If the object was sitting still, it will remain stationary.

If
it was moving at a constant velocity, it will keep moving.

• It takes force to change the motion of an object.

What is meant by unbalanced force?

 If the forces on an object are equal and opposite, they are said
to be balanced, and the object experiences no change in motion.
If they are not equal and opposite, then the forces are
unbalanced and the motion of the object changes.
Some Examples from Real Life

• A soccer ball is sitting at rest. It

takes an unbalanced force of a kick
to change its motion.

• Two teams are playing tug of war. They are both

exerting equal force on the rope in opposite directions.
This balanced force results in no change of motion.
 Newton’s First Law is also called the
Law of Inertia

• Inertia: the tendency of an object to resist changes in its

state of motion

• The First Law states that all objects have inertia.

The
more mass an object has, the more inertia it has (and
the harder it is to change its motion).
More Examples from Real Life
• A powerful locomotive begins to pull a
long line of boxcars that were sitting at
rest. Since the boxcars are so massive,
they have a great deal of inertia and it
takes a large force to change their motion.
Once they are moving, it takes a large
force to stop them.

• On your way to school, a bug flies

into your windshield. Since the bug
is so small, it has very little inertia
and exerts a very small force on
your car (so small that you don’t
even feel it).
• If objects in motion tend to stay in motion, why don’t moving
objects keep moving forever?

― Things don’t keep moving forever because there’s

almost always an unbalanced force acting upon it.

A book sliding across a table slows

down and stops because of the force of
friction.

If you throw a ball upwards it will

eventually slow down and fall because
of the force of gravity.
• In outer space, away from gravity and any sources of
friction, a rocket ship launched with a certain speed
and direction would keep going in that same
direction and at that same speed forever.
 Newton’s Second Law

Force equals mass times acceleration.

F = ma

 Acceleration: a measurement of how quickly an

object is changing speed.
What does F = ma mean?
• Force is directly proportional to mass and acceleration.
Imagine a ball of a certain mass moving at a certain
acceleration. This ball has a certain force.

• Now imagine we make the ball twice as big (double the

mass) but keep the acceleration constant. F = ma says
that this new ball has twice the force of the old ball.

• Now imagine the original ball moving at twice the

original acceleration. F = ma says that the ball will
again have twice the force of the ball at the original
acceleration.
More about F = ma
• If you double the mass, you double the force. If you
double the acceleration, you double the force.

What if you double the mass and the acceleration?

(2m)(2a) = 4F

Doubling the mass and the acceleration quadruples the

force.

So . . . what if you decrease the mass by half? How much

force would the object have now?
What does F = ma say?
F = ma basically means that the force of an object
comes from its mass and its acceleration.

• Something very massive (high mass)

that’s changing speed very slowly
(low acceleration), like a glacier, can
still have great force.

• Something very small (low mass) that’s

changing speed very quickly (high
acceleration), like a bullet, can still
have a great force. Something very
small changing speed very slowly will
have a very weak force.
 Newton’s Third Law

For every action there is an equal and

opposite reaction.
What does this mean?

• For every force acting on an object, there is an equal force

acting in the opposite direction.
• Right now, gravity is pulling you down in your seat, but
Newton’s Third Law says your seat is pushing up against you
with equal force. This is why you are not moving. There is a
balanced force acting on you– gravity pulling down, your seat
pushing up.
Think about it . . .
• What happens if you are standing on a
skateboard or a slippery floor and push against
a wall? You slide in the opposite direction (away
from the wall), because you pushed on the wall
but the wall pushed back on you with equal and
opposite force.

• Why does it hurt so much when you stub your

toe? When your toe exerts a force on a rock, the
rock exerts an equal force back on your toe.
The harder you hit your toe against it, the more
force the rock exerts back on your toe (and the
more your toe hurts).
 Review
 Newton’s First Law:
• Objects in motion tend to stay in motion and
objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted
upon by an unbalanced force.

 Newton’s Second Law:

• Force equals mass times acceleration (F = ma).

 Newton’s Third Law:

• For every action there is an equal and opposite
reaction.
Vocabulary
 Inertia: the tendency of an object to resist changes in its
state of motion

 Acceleration:
 a change in velocity
 a measurement of how quickly an object is
changing speed, direction or both

 Velocity: The rate of change of a position along a

straight line with respect to time.

 Force: strength or energy

FORCE AND MOTION
STANDARDS
• Students will investigate the relationship between
force, mass, and the motion of objects.

a. Determine the relationship between velocity and

acceleration.
b. Demonstrate the effect of balanced and unbalanced forces
on an object in terms of gravity, inertia, and friction.
Speed, Velocity, and Acceleration
• To describe motion accurately and completely, a frame
of reference is needed.
• An object is in motion if it changes position relative to a
reference point.

• Objects that we call stationary—such as a tree, a sign, or a

building—make good reference points.

 The passenger can use a tree as a reference point to decide if the

train is moving. A tree makes a good reference point because it is
stationary from the passenger’s point of view.
 DESCRIBING MOTION
• Whether or not an object is in
motion depends on the
reference point you choose.
Distance
• When an object moves, it goes from point A to point B – that is
the DISTANCE it traveled. (SI unit is the meter)
• Distance is how much ground an object has covered during its
motion.

B A
Displacement
• Knowing how far something moves is not sufficient. One must
also know in what direction the object moved.
• Displacement is how far our of place the object is; it is the
object’s overall change in position.
Speed

• It is a rate!
• What does that mean?
• A change over time. What is the
change?
• Change in position, in other
words, distance.
• Standard unit: meters per
second (m/s)
 Speed
• Calculating Speed: If you know the distance an object
travels in a certain amount of time, you can calculate the
speed of the object.

What is
instantaneous
speed?
Instantaneous
speed is the
velocity of an object
at a certain time.

Speed = Distance/time Average speed = Total distance/Total time

 Velocity
• Because velocity depends on direction as well as speed, the
velocity of an object can change even if the speed of the object
remains constant.
• The speed of this car might be constant, but its velocity is not
constant because the direction of motion is always changing.
 Velocity

• Velocity is a description of an object’s speed and direction.

• As the sailboat’s direction changes,

its velocity also changes, even if its
speed stays the same. If the sailboat
slows down at the same time that it
changes direction, how will its
velocity be changed?
 Speed vs. Velocity
1. How are speed and velocity similar?
-They both measure how fast something is moving

2. How are speed and velocity different?

-Velocity includes the direction of motion and speed
does not (the car is moving 5 mph East)

3. Is velocity more like distance or displacement? Why?

-Displacement, because it includes direction.
 Graphing Speed

D
I
S Speed
T increasing
A Object begins moving at a
different speed
N
C Object is stopped
E

TIME
 Slope

• The steepness of a line on a graph is called slope.

• The steeper the slope is, the greater the speed.
• A constant slope represents motion at constant speed.

 Using the points shown, the rise is

400 meters and the run is
2 minutes. To find the slope, you
divide 400 meters by 2 minutes.
The slope is 200 meters per
minute.
Formula for Calculating Speed
Speed = Distance time
 Problem Solving: Calculating Speed
 What is the speed of a sailboat that is traveling 120 meters
in 60 seconds?

Step 1: Decide what the problem is asking?

A boat traveled 120 meters in 60 seconds. What was the
speed of the boat?

Step 2: What is the formula to calculate speed?

Speed = Distance/Time

Step 3: Solve the problem using the formula:

Speed = 120 meters 60 seconds = 2 m/s
So, the boat was traveling at 2 m/s
Now you try:
What is the speed of a car that is traveling 150 miles in 3
hours?

Answer:

Step 1: What are the facts in the problem?

A car is traveling 150 miles in 3 hours.

Step 2: What is the formula to solve the problem?

Speed = Distance/Time

Step 3: Solve the problem.

Speed = 150 miles 3 hours
Speed = 50 miles/hr.
So, the car is traveling 50 miles/hr.
 Acceleration

• Acceleration is the rate at which velocity changes.

• Acceleration can result from a change in speed
(increase or decrease), a change in direction (back,
forth, up, down left, right), or changes in both.
• The pitcher throws. The ball speeds toward the batter. Off the bat it goes.
It’s going, going, gone! A home run!
• Before landing, the ball went through several changes in motion. It sped up
in the pitcher’s hand, and lost speed as it traveled toward the batter. The
ball stopped when it hit the bat, changed direction, sped up again, and
eventually slowed down. Most examples of motion involve similar changes.
In fact, rarely does any object’s motion stay the same for very long.
 Understanding Acceleration
1. As the ball falls from the girl’s hand, how does its speed change?

2. What happens to the speed of

the ball as it rises from the ground
back to her hand?
3. At what point does the ball
have zero velocity?

4. How does the velocity

of the ball change when
it bounces on the floor?
 You can feel acceleration!
• If you’re moving at 500 mph
east without turbulence, there
is no acceleration.

• But if the plane hits an air pocket and drops 500 feet in
2 seconds, there is a large change in acceleration and
you will feel that!

 It does not matter whether you speed up or slow down; it

is still considered a change in acceleration.
 In science, acceleration refers to increasing speed,
decreasing speed, or changing direction.

• A car that begins to move from a stopped position or

speeds up to pass another car is accelerating. A car
decelerates when it stops at a red light.

• A water skier decelerates when the boat stops pulling.

• A softball accelerates when it changes direction

as it is hit.
 Calculating Acceleration

• So…Acceleration = (Final speed – Initial speed)

Time
Acceleration = Change in velocity
Total time
Formula:
vf – vi
t
vf= final velocity
vi= initial velocity
t= time
 Calculating Acceleration

As a roller-coaster car starts down a slope, its speed is 4 m/s.

But 3 seconds later, at the bottom, its speed is 22 m/s. What is
its average acceleration?

What information have you

been given?

Initial speed = 4 m/s

Final Speed = 22 m/s
Time = 3 s
 Calculating Acceleration
What quantity are you trying to calculate?
The average acceleration of the roller-coaster car.

What formula contains the given quantities and the

unknown quantity?

Acceleration = (Final speed – Initial speed)/Time

Perform the calculation.

Acceleration = (22 m/s – 4 m/s)/3 s

= 18 m/s/3 s
Acceleration = 6 m/s2

 The roller-coaster car’s average acceleration is 6 m/s2.

 Graphing acceleration

S
P
Object
E accelerates
Object decelerates
E
D
Object moves
at constant
speed

T I M E
 Try this problem:

A roller coasters velocity at the top of the hill is 10 m/s. Two

seconds later it reaches the bottom of the hill with a velocity
of 26 m/s. What is the acceleration of the coaster?

Formula:

vf= final velocity

vi= initial velocity
t= time
• The slanted, straight line on this speed-versus-time graph tells you that the
cyclist is accelerating at a constant rate. The slope of a speed-versus-time
graph tells you the object’s acceleration. Predicting How would the slope of
the graph change if the cyclist were accelerating at a greater rate? At a lesser
rate?
• Since the slope is increasing, you can conclude that the
speed is also increasing. You are accelerating.

Distance-Versus-Time Graph
The curved line on this distance-
versus-time graph tells you that
the cyclist is accelerating.
 Acceleration Problems

• A roller coaster is moving at 25 m/s at the bottom of a hill. Three seconds later it
reaches the top of the hill moving at 10 m/s. What was the acceleration of the
coaster?

Given:
Initial Speed = 25 m/s
Final Speed = 10 m/s
Time = 3 seconds

Remember (final speed – initial speed) ÷ time is acceleration.

a = (10 m/s – 25 m/s) ÷ 3 s
= -15 m/s ÷ 3 s
a = -5 m/s2

This roller coaster is decelerating.

• A car’s velocity changes from 0 m/s to 30 m/s in 10
seconds. Calculate acceleration.
Formula:
Final speed = 30 m/s
Initial speed = 0 m/s
Time = 10 s vf= final velocity
vi= initial velocity
t= time

Remember (final speed – initial speed) ÷ time is acceleration.

a = (30 m/s – 0 m/s) ÷ 10 s
= 30 m/s ÷ 10 s
a = 3 m/s2
• A satellite’s original velocity is 10,000 m/s. After 60
seconds it s going 5,000 m/s. What is the
acceleration?
Remember (final speed – initial speed) ÷ time is acceleration.
Final speed (velocity) = 5000 m/s
Initial speed (velocity) = 10,000 m/s
Time = 60 seconds

a = (5000 m/s – 10,000 m/s) ÷ 60 s

= -5000 m/s ÷ 60 s
a = -83.33 m/s2

**This satellite is decelerating.

• If a speeding train hits the brakes and it takes the train
39 seconds to go from 54.8 m/s to 12 m/s what is the
acceleration?
Remember (final speed – initial speed) ÷ time is acceleration.
Final speed= 12 m/s
Initial speed= 54.8 m/s
Time = 39 s

a =12 m/s – 54.8 m/s ÷ 39 s

= -42.8 m/s ÷ 39 s
a = -1.097 m/s2

This train is decelerating.

End.. Thank you!