Question

An ox pulls a cart on a muddy ground with a constant force in the horizontal direction. Your goal is to find the acceleration of the cart. In the standard problem solving strategy, the very first step is to draw a free body diagram. This should be a sketch of the cart

a) and all the forces existing in the scene described above.
b) and optionally the single largest force acting on the cart. c) and all the forces the cart applies to its surroundings.
d) and a complete collection of physics equations about carts.
e) and all the forces felt by the cart due to its surroundings.

Answer 1

To find the acceleration of a cart being pulled by an ox, one should draw a free-body diagram including all external horizontal forces and apply Newton's second law to solve for the cart's acceleration, after accounting for the force of the ox and estimating friction.

Step-by-step explanation:

To answer the student's question about how to find the acceleration of a cart being pulled by an ox on muddy ground, we should note that the best option is e, to draw a free-body diagram and all the forces felt by the cart due to its surroundings. This is because a free-body diagram is a powerful tool in physics that helps us visualize all the external forces acting on an object. To start, we draw a sketch of the cart and represent it as a dot. From this dot, we draw vectors to illustrate all the forces including the pulling force of the ox, the frictional force from the muddy ground opposing the motion, and the normal force and gravitational force which balance each other vertically.

Once we have our free-body diagram, we apply Newton's second law of motion, Σ F = ma (where F is the net force, m is the mass, and a is the acceleration), to the horizontal forces since the cart moves horizontally. If we know the mass of the cart and the force applied by the ox, and estimate the frictional force, we can then solve for the cart's acceleration. Remember to check your answer for reasonableness and correct units.