NEWTON’S

LAWS 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.
 FIRST LAW OF MOTION:
LAW OF INERTIA

An object at rest will stay at rest,

and an object in motion will stay
in motion at constant velocity,
unless acted upon 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.

LAW OF INERTIA
The huge rock will not move unless a force acts on it
LAW OF INERTIA

If objects in motion
tend to stay in
motion, why don’t
moving objects keep
moving forever?
LAW OF INERTIA
Things don’t keep moving forever because
there’s almost always an unbalanced force
acting upon it.

A bicycle that is running will slow If you throw a ball upwards it will
down and halt because of the force of eventually slow down and fall
Friction because of the force of gravity.
NEWTONS’S 1ST LAW AND YOU

Because of inertia, objects (including

you) resist changes in their motion.
When the car going 70 km/hour is
stopped by the brick wall, your body
keeps moving at 70 m/hour.
 SECOND LAW OF MOTION:
LAW OF ACCELERATION

The net force of an object is equal

to the product of its mass and
acceleration, or F=ma.
F
a
m
 LAW OF ACCELERATION
F = ma means that the force of an object comes from its mass
and its acceleration.
Something very massive (high mass) that is
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.
LAW OF ACCELERATION
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?
LAW OF ACCELERATION

When mass is in kilograms and acceleration is in

m/s/s, the unit of force is in newtons (N).

One newton is equal to the force required to

accelerate one kilogram of mass at one
meter/second/second.
LAW OF ACCELERATION

How much force is needed to accelerate a 1400

kilogram car 2 meters per second/per second?
Write the formula
F=mxa
Write the given
F = 1400 kg x 2 meters per second/second
Solve for the unknown
2800 kg-meters/second/second or 2800 N
LAW OF ACCELERATION

EXAMPLE: The brakes of a 1,000-kg ambulance truck

exert 2,500 N. (a) What is its acceleration? (b) How long will
it come to a stop from a velocity of 25 m/s?
Solution:
(a) a = F/m = 2,500N/ 1,000N
= 2.5 m/s2
(b) v2 = v1 + at
0 = 25m/s – 2.5 m/s2 (t)
t = 25 m/s
2.5 m/s2
= 10 sec
NEWTON’S 2ND LAW PROVES THAT DIFFERENT MASSES
ACCELERATE TO THE EARTH AT THE SAME RATE, BUT WITH
DIFFERENT FORCES.

Objects with different

masses accelerate to the
ground at the same rate.
However, because of the
2nd Law we know that
they don’t hit the
ground with the same
force.

F = ma F = ma
98 N = 10 kg x 9.8 m/s/s 9.8 N = 1 kg x 9.8
m/s/s
 THIRD LAW OF MOTION: LAW
OF INTERACTION

For every action there is an equal

and opposite reaction.
LAW OF INTERACTION

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.
Force always come in pairs – equal and
opposite action-reaction force pairs.
LAW OF INTERACTION

Let's study how a rocket works to

understand Newton's Third Law

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.