Newtons Laws

Newton’s three laws, when put into simple terms, aren’t confusing concepts. Just remember that an object is balanced until acted on by a larger force and then is still balanced when it goes at a constant speed until acted on again by a larger force that stops it. The second law is Force= mass X acceleration. And the third is all forces act in pairs, pretty simple right? Just remember this and the examples and the rest should make more sense.

The three laws of motion explain how an object will either stay in motion or what makes it move, (law of inertia),
Force= mass X acceleration, and action and reaction.
This essay will basically take the dry basics of the rules and elaborate and give examples of how they work so you will have a better understanding of the laws. Including examples of labs that demonstrate, lets introduce the first law.

Newton’s 1st law of motion states that an object at rest will stay at rest until acted on by larger force.
Objects in motion will stay in motion until stopped by a larger force. Basically this is stating that an object will not move if it isn’t affected by an unbalanced force. It also says that if it starts to move, it will continue moving in that direction until a larger force stops this. Say you put a basketball in a swivel chair and start to roll the chair. If you stopped the chair, the ball would continue in the same direction until you, another object, or friction stops it. When it is at a constant speed it is a balanced force just like it was before it started moving. If you put a restraint on the ball, like tying it to the chair, it would stop it from continuing to go. This is the reason we have seat belts in cars, so we don’t fly through the windshield if you stop quickly, because without that restraint, you’d continue to go right out of the car. And depending on how much you weigh, and how quickly the car stopped, you would probably go pretty far. This is an example of Newton’s 2nd law of motion.

Newton’s 2nd law states that the smaller the object is, the more acceleration is there will be. The larger the object, the less acceleration there will be. This is because Force= mass X acceleration. Basically the more mass you have and the more force you have, the more you will accelerate. So say you have three different sized balls. They all had different masses and you role all three of them, using the same force. They will all have different accelerations, the smallest one having the greatest acceleration. So if you have the different size balls but have the same acceleration, most likely, there was a different force. If the balls all had the same mass, and you pushed them at different forces, the acceleration would differ. Clear as mud? Well what would happen if one of them ran into each other and they sprang off in different directions, well if it follows the first law, this wouldn’t happen but this would be an example of Newton’s third law. Newton’s 3rd law of motion states that all Forces act in pairs. For one force to act on an object, second object will have force in the opposite direction.
This one is pretty simply put. Say you have a suction cup and a spring with an object attached to them. Stick the object to a window, having the spring be squeezed together. Eventually, depending on how powerful your suction cup is, the object will spring off in the opposite direction because the force built up and acting in opposite to the suction cup that kept it attached to the window. And depending on how powerful your spring is, determines how far your object would go. It would go forever like it says in the first law except a large force called gravity would pull it downward so it wouldn’t continue to go and fly outwards. This is a great example of the last law.