Newton's Three Laws of Motion

Newton's Three Laws of Motion

We experience each of Sir Isaac Newton's laws everyday. In a car, pushing a car, or even in a fight. All of these laws have to do with motion. You can experience the first law in a stopping car, the second when you are a pushing a shopping cart, and the third one in the water.

Newton's first law in laymen terms is "An object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest, unless the object is acted upon by an outside force." You would feel the law if you were in a fast moving car, lets say 70 mph, which suddenly comes to a stop. You would continue to move forward (If you didn't have a seat belt on) but the car would come to a stop. You would then continue to move through the air at 70 mph until you hit the ground because you are not connected to the car. You would fall to the ground because of gravity. If you were in an area with a vacuum and you crashed, you would not stop. The impact would hurt very much because of Newton's Third law, which I will explain later.

Newton's second law can be explained with the equation, A=F/M or F=MA, where A=Acceleration, F=Force, and M=Mass. In normal words, Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. The greater the mass (of the object being accelerated) the greater the amount of force needed (to accelerate the object). You can use this formula to see how much force is needed to move certain objects. Lets say Mike's car is about 1,000 kg. He pushes it at .06 m/s/s. The equation would be F=1,000(.05). The answer is F=50 Newtons (the SI unit for Force). If Bob is trying to move a van, which was about 2,000 kg at the same acceleration, then he would need to use twice the force that Mike had to because Bob's car is 2,000 kg and Mike's is 1,000 kg.

Newton's third law says that every action has an equal and opposite re-action. These are two separate forces, which act upon two separate objects, and so they do not cancel each other out. If you punch someone's face, not only does your hand apply force to the victim's face, but also the victim's face applies a force on your hand. Therefore, your hand hurts and so does the victim's face but since the face is softer than the hand, it will hurt more. If you push a van with roller blades on with 100 Newtons, you will be pushing the