Newton's 1st law of motion told us why objects accelerate (or don't accelerate) due to a net force. But how do we calculate the actual value of the acceleration? And how exactly is it related to the net force? That's where we need Newton's 2nd law of motion.
The famous equation that we get from Newton's 2nd Law, ΣF = ma, is the foundation for this unit and a lot of physics. It also takes care of Newton's 1st law of motion conceptually: if there's no net force then there's no acceleration, so an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will have a constant velocity.
We're going to start with a conceptual understanding of Newton's 2nd law and introduce a new concept: mass. An object's mass is a measure of its inertia, so objects with more mass have more inertia and are more resistant to a change in their state of motion. Think about pushing an empty grocery cart and a full grocery cart - which one is harder to move and turn around corners?
Then we'll learn how to draw a free body diagram and apply Newton's 2nd law equation in 1D and 2D. Just like we learned in kinematics, the x and y directions are independent, so we can write ΣF = ma for the x direction and the y direction to get two equations. Then we can use those equations to solve for any value we want to find.
Answers
- Newton's 2nd Law of Motion
- Free body diagrams
Newton's 1st law of motion told us why objects accelerate (or don't accelerate) due to a net force. But how do we calculate the actual value of the acceleration? And how exactly is it related to the net force? That's where we need Newton's 2nd law of motion.
The famous equation that we get from Newton's 2nd Law, ΣF = ma, is the foundation for this unit and a lot of physics. It also takes care of Newton's 1st law of motion conceptually: if there's no net force then there's no acceleration, so an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will have a constant velocity.
We're going to start with a conceptual understanding of Newton's 2nd law and introduce a new concept: mass. An object's mass is a measure of its inertia, so objects with more mass have more inertia and are more resistant to a change in their state of motion. Think about pushing an empty grocery cart and a full grocery cart - which one is harder to move and turn around corners?
Then we'll learn how to draw a free body diagram and apply Newton's 2nd law equation in 1D and 2D. Just like we learned in kinematics, the x and y directions are independent, so we can write ΣF = ma for the x direction and the y direction to get two equations. Then we can use those equations to solve for any value we want to find.
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