Newton's Three Laws

                                      Newton's Three Laws

Everyone knows the famous scientist Newton's interaction with an apple, but do we know what it means?

Law one
Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
Law two
The relationship between an object's mass (m), its acceleration (a), and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors which means the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.
Law three
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Hover Disc Lab Big question: What gives rise to a change in motion? 

When the hover disc was on, there was little friction between the ground and the disc because of the air being produced by the disc. When the disc was off, it was full of friction because it was in direct contact with the ground. A change in motion is affected by different types of forces, such as friction and gravity.

Real World Connection: Air hockey tables

When we get rid of the friction of the table, the puck can be pushed once and will stay in motion until it hits the side of the table or the opponent's "stick". Just as the first law states, an object at motion will stay in motion until acted upon by another force.

Fan Cart lab: 

BIG QUESTION: 

What is the relationship between mass force and acceleration? 

We first turned on the fan cart and pushed it towards the aluminum ring until it collided. We added different masses to the cart and recorded our data.

Real World Connection: Racing

If a heavy car were to race against a thrown baseball, the car would obviously lose the race, but do we know why? Since the equation for acceleration is F=ma, if we increase the mass, the acceleration will decrease, and if we decrease the mass, the acceleration will increase! This picture is a visual for what I explained.

Fan Cart lab and Hover Disc lab:

In Newton's third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the forces that are the opposites need to be:

• Equal in magnitude
• Opposite in direction
• The same net force

Real World Connection: Baseball

When a baseball is hit by a batter, such as Hunter Pence of the Giants, the ball collides with the bat and is sent flying through the air. The forces interacting in this collision are equal because the force of the bat hitting the ball is equal to the force as the ball hitting the bat. Also, they are going in opposite directions, as you can see in the picture. If a person hits a baseball with a bat with 30N of force (I chose 30 arbitrarily) 30N of force is applied to BOTH the bat and ball, but in opposite vector directions.