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Apply Newton's three laws of motion to everyday situations.

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Hey there!

We'll start with the first law, the law of inertia, which states:

"an object in motion will stay in motion moving at the same speed in the same direction unless acted on by an outside force".

Let's imagine you're playing soccer with your friends. You kick the ball at them really hard, and they're the goalie. It goes in the same direction in a straight line, and then they catch it - the unbalanced force. There's a change in motion there, and that change in motion depends on the inertia of an object- it's tendency to resist change in motion. Inertia even applies to planets. Wonder why out Earth's orbit is an ellipse? By natural standards of physics, the Earth goes straight when it's not pulled into orbit when here it is. It still has that tendency to go straight, but the Sun pulls it towards itself, creating a motion in which the Earth is trying to go straight, but the Sun's more powerful.

The second law is pretty much summarized by the famous equation f = ma. The law, summed up, states,

"The net force of an object is equal to the mass of the object times its acceleration."

If you tried to give a push to a small box with efficient wheels, it'd go pretty far. This is because it has not a lot of mass, and the force required isn't a lot. However, if we had a large box on the ground, the force required to move it would be larger, as it's more massive and doesn't have any acceleration. Imagine a shopping cart filled to the ceiling with cereal. It would require a lot of force, wouldn't it? Be sure to think about that.

Last one. Newton's third law is perhaps the most famous. It states,

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction".

This is probably the hardest one to understand. Let's try an example. Have you ever accidentally not tightened your balloon, and it started to fly up? That's an application of Newton's third law. The air comes out from the bottom, and the balloon flies up - that's an opposite reaction; up and down. It's the same thing with a rocket. The same force to propel it up is exerted on the ground - an equal reaction.

Hope this helps! Be sure to let me know if you have any questions :)


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