Newton's Laws of Motion and Inertia: Understanding Forces and Acceleration, Lecture notes of Law

Download Newton's Laws of Motion and Inertia: Understanding Forces and Acceleration and more Lecture notes Law in PDF only on Docsity! 8.3 Vocabulary: Inertia - 8.3 Newton’s Laws of Motion First Law of Motion – Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by a nonzero net force. An object moving at a constant velocity will continue moving at a constant velocity unless acted upon by a nonzero net force. Inertia – all objects, moving or not, resist changes in motion. Resistance to change in motion is called inertia. Newton’s first law of motion is also called the law of inertia. Inertia explains many common events, including why you move forward in your seat when the car you are in stops suddenly. You keep moving forward because of inertia. A force, such as the pull of a seatbelt, is needed to pull you back. Inertia Depends on Mass – some objects have more inertia than others. The greater the mass of an object, the greater its inertia, and the greater the force required to change its motion. Newton’s Second Law of Motion: An object’s acceleration depends on its mass and on the net force acting on it. Acceleration = Net Force Mass Or written another way: Net Force = Mass x Acceleration Changes in Force and Mass – if you increase the force on a shopping cart without changing its mass, the acceleration of the cart will also increase. Your cart will accelerate faster if something falls out, because this reduces the mass of the cart. Acceleration is measured in meters per second per second (m/s²). Mass is measured in kilograms (kg). Newton’s second law shows that force is measured in kilograms times meters per second (kg x m/s²). This unit is also called the newton (N) which is the SI unit of force. One newton is the force required to give a 1-kg mass an acceleration of 1 m/s². Newton’s Third Law of Motion: If one object exerts a force on another object, then the second object exerts a force of equal strength in the opposite direction on the first object. Another way to state this is: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.