Question

Part A In order to lift a bucket of concrete, you must pull up harder on the bucket than it pulls down on you. ○True ○ False

Answer 1

The statement is true. To lift a bucket of concrete, you must exert a greater force on the bucket than its weight.

Step-by-step explanation:

In order to lift a bucket of concrete, you must pull up harder on the bucket than it pulls down on you. This statement is True.

According to Newton's third law of motion, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you pull up on the bucket with a certain force, the bucket exerts an equal force downwards on you. However, in order to lift the bucket, you need to exert a force greater than the weight of the bucket.

For example, if the bucket weighs 500 N, you would need to pull up with a force greater than 500 N to lift it.

Answer 2

The statement in Part A is false; both the bucket and the person exert equal and opposite forces on each other. The statement about the boy pushing the box is also false because the actual force depends on various factors including friction and the ramp's mechanical advantage. Principles such as Archimedes' and Pascal's demonstrate the effects of mechanical advantage in different contexts.

Step-by-step explanation:

In response to the student's question, Part A of the question is false. When lifting a bucket of concrete, you do need to exert a force that counters the gravitational force acting on the bucket (its weight), but according to Newton's third law, the bucket pulls down on you with the same magnitude of force as you pull up on it. The true-false statement is that 'A boy pushed a box with a weight of 300 N up a ramp. He said that, because the ramp was 1.0 m high and 3.0 m long, he must have been pushing with a force of exactly 100 N.' This statement is false because the actual force exerted by the boy also depends on other factors like friction and the mechanical advantage provided by the ramp. For levers such as a nail puller, wheelbarrow, and shovel, the mechanical advantage (MA) allows you to exert greater force or lift heavier loads than your body alone could. This does not contradict Archimedes' principle, which relates to buoyancy in fluids, nor Pascal's principle, which explains how hydraulic systems can lift heavy objects such as cars with comparatively little input force.