What happens when two forces act in the same direction on an object in terms of net force and motion...
Solution
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When two forces act on an object in the same direction, the net force on the object is the sum of the magnitudes of the two forces. This is because forces are vector quantities, which means they have both magnitude and direction. When vectors point in the same direction, their magnitudes add up.
When two forces act on an object in the same direction, the net force on the object is the sum of the magnitudes of the two forces. This is because forces are vector quantities, which means they have both magnitude and direction. When vectors point in the same direction, their magnitudes add up.
Let's denote the two forces as and , with both forces acting in the same direction. To find the net force () acting on the object, we simply add the magnitudes of and :
This net force will cause the object to accelerate in the direction of the forces, according to Newton's second law of motion, which states that the acceleration () of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass (), given by the formula:
The direction of the acceleration will be the same as the direction of the net force and, consequently, the same as the direction of the individual forces.
Let's consider an example to illustrate this. Suppose we have two forces, N and N, acting on a 5 kg object in the same direction. To find the net force, we add the two forces:
Now, using Newton's second law, we can find the acceleration of the object:
This means the object will accelerate in the direction of the forces at .
In summary, when two forces act in the same direction on an object, the net force is the sum of the forces, and this net force determines the acceleration of the object according to Newton's second law. The object will move in the direction of the forces with an acceleration proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to its mass.
Forces And The Laws Of Motion
Example of an Object Moving in Circular Motion from the Vantage Point of the Inertial Observer
Part 2- The Work of the Net Force Equals the Change in Kinetic Energy
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Forces And The Laws Of Motion
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Hello. In this lesson,
we're going to be talking about forces and the laws of motion.
Right now we're in our chapter of dynamics.
Now, what is dynamics?
Dynamics is a part if classical mechanics which deals with
explaining how forces and torques affect a body's motion.
Now, torques, we're going to speak about a little bit later.
But in the meantime, let's speak about the basics,
which is a force. What is a force?
Now, intuitively, a force can be described as a push or a pull.
But if we want to go a little bit more in-depth,
a force is any interaction with the body which can alter the motion of the body.
Force is a vector quantity,
and that means that it has both size and direction.
Force is denoted by the letter capital F, okay,
capital F for force,
and it is measured with the SI units in Newtons,
which is denoted by a capital N. When we're talking about forces,
it's customary to talk about contact forces and non-contact forces.
Let's first speak about contact forces.
Now, contact forces is anything that you have to physically touch in order
to exert a force and in order to cause some kind of change in the motion.
A contact force examples are a horse pulling a carriage,
a hammer hitting a nail.
Things that have to touch.
Non-contact forces are forces that are exerted without physically touching one another.
For instance, a magnet exerting its fields,
which then attracts the paperclip,
magnetic attraction, or the Earth's pulling the moon.
That's for instance, gravity.
Another example is the attractive force between an electron and its atom's core.
An interesting little side point or
side fact is that the force responsible for contact forces,
so all the forces that there has to be to touch between the 2 objects.
In fact, that force that's responsible for that is an electromagnetic force.
It's in fact a non-contact force and
this electromagnetic force acts between the electrons on the surfaces of
the objects such that they're never actually touching and the force that you
feel is due to the electromagnetic force between those electrons.
That is something that we're not going to talk about now,
you'll learn a little bit about that in your next physics course,
Physics 2, which is electricity and you'll
learn probably a lot more about that in your quantum mechanics courses.
If multiple forces are acting on a body,
then the total force or the net force on the body is simply the sum of all of the forces.
The net force, which is the total force acting on a body,
is the vector sum of all of the forces acting on the body.
Let's go back. Now,
we said that a force is a vector quantity.
Let's speak about how it's denoted.
It's denoted by the letter capital F. Sometimes because force is a vector quantity,
so sometimes it's also denoted as capital F with an arrow on top.
This arrow on top means that this is a vector quantity.
Now when we were dealing with the net force,
it's the vector sum of all of the forces acting on the body.
So a lot of the time we can say that our F total or net force is
going to be equal to the vector sum of all of the forces acting on the body.
Now, this sign over here is the Greek letter Sigma and it represents sum,
you'll see this notation in many courses.
It just means you add up everything.
What does that mean?
That means that if we have 3 forces acting on the body,
so we'll have F_1 plus F_2 plus F_3.
If there's more, then we'll just add on all of them.
Now, when we're dealing with the vector sum of all of the forces,
that means that we have to add up every-component separately.
So let's say that we're dealing with Cartesian coordinates.
We're dealing with our x,
y, z coordinate system,
and just to make this a little bit quicker,
let's say that there's no z-component,
we just have x and y-components.
That will mean, therefore,
that the sum of our F-components, the total,
is going to be equal to our x-component of F_1 plus
our x-component of F_2 plus our x-component of F_3,
and so on and so forth.
Similarly, for the y-component,
our total force in the y-direction is going to be
our y-component of F_1 plus our y-component of F_2,
plus our y-component of F_3,
and so on and so forth.
Of course, if we have a z-component,
it will look identical.
In conclusion, we learned what a force is,
that it's denoted by the letter F,
usually with an arrow on top.
That it's a vector quantity,
which means it has size and direction,
and that it is measured in Newtons,
okay, those are its SI units.
The last important thing to remember is that
the net force or the sum of all of the forces acting on a body,
we just add them up.
What's important is to break them up into the different components.
Here, for instance, we have an x and y-components and add
up just the x-components and just the y-components.
That's the end of this lesson.
This lesson introduces the concept of forces and the laws of motion in the context of classical mechanics. It explains that a force is any interaction with a body that can alter its motion, and is denoted by the letter F and measured in Newtons. It is further divided into contact forces, which require physical contact, and non-contact forces, such as gravity and magnetism. The net force on a body is the vector sum of all the forces acting on it, and must be broken down into its components when calculating.
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