Isaac Newton was an English-born physicist, inventor, alchemist, theologian, and mathematician whose most popular achievement was establishing his three laws tied to mechanics: Newton’s laws.
Newton’s three laws of motion seek to explain the consequences of dynamics . Newton argues that motion is only about the transfer of a body from one point to another.
Specifically, in Newton’s second law known as the Fundamental Principle of Dynamics , English establishes that the mass of a body is proportional to the force that must be exerted to accelerate it. In other words, to accelerate a body: the more mass, the more force.
Newton’s Second Law is used to calculate the acceleration required by the body to move, knowing its mass and force.
- Calculate the acceleration of a baseball when hitting it. The harder the ball is hit with the bat, the faster it will move.
- Take the ball by hand. When the hand is pulled back so that the ball loses acceleration. This is more common if the ball is heavy.
- Pushing one or two carts. It takes a lot of force to move a cart.
- Pushing a car full of people. Twice as much force must be applied to move a heavier cart.
- Drive a small car or truck. The force that must be applied to accelerate a small car (to arrive in a certain time) is not the same that must be exerted in a truck, since it has more weight.
- Two people walking together. You can know the difference in the acceleration of each person when walking, knowing their weight and how hard they walk.
- Two people pushing a large object . It is possible to know which of the two people had to apply greater force based on their own body weight, and to know at what acceleration the object moved.
- Playing golf.It is very similar to the first example of the baseball. You can calculate the acceleration of the club.
- Launching a rocket.Like a car, launching a rocket and achieving the necessary acceleration to ascend into space will depend on its mass.
- Any object in free fall.The object with more mass will hit the ground faster.
- The suspension in the air of a helicopter. You can know the force that should have been applied so that a helicopter does not descend.