Newton's first law of motion

 

Newton's first law of motion

What is Newton's first law of motion?

Newton's first law of motion states an object at rest or in motion will remain at rest or in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. A ball will continue to move in the forward direction unless an unbalanced force acts on it.

What are the 3 laws of motion?

Newtons's first law of motion states an object at rest or in motion will remain at rest or in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Newton's second law of motion states the net force (F_{net}) of an object is dependent on both the mass (m) and acceleration (a) of an object. Newton's third law of motion states for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

What are examples of Newton's 1st law of motion?

According to Newton's first law of motion; if a pan full of water was carried around a track, the water would tend to remain traveling forward. However, as the water moves to the left, the water will appear to splash to the right. Space is almost a perfect vacuum void of matter and gravity. Consider a satellite orbiting Earth at 17,500 mph. If a rock were released from the satellite, the rock would orbit earth at a velocity of 17,500 mph next to the satellite.

In 1687 English scientist Sir Isaac Newton published his three laws of motion. Newton's laws of motion are relatively simple statements that revolutionized humanity's understanding of the physical world. Today they are considered foundational to classical mechanics, one of the main branches of physics.

A simple definition of Newton's first law of motion is that it is a law of physics that states that an object at rest or in motion will remain at rest or in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. A force is a push or pull on an object with mass that causes a change in the object's motion. Force is measured in Newtons (N) or kg m/s^{2}.

Balanced Force

The image below shows forces directly acting on the box. Since the magnitude of the arrows are equal, the upward and downward forces are balanced. Balanced forces are equal in magnitude and opposite direction. According to Newton's first law, balanced forces are responsible for keeping an object at rest or maintaining an object's constant velocity.

Inertia is directly proportional to mass. The greater the mass an object has the more the object will resist a change in motion. The elephants in this image have different masses. If these elephants were running at the same speed and had to stop immediately, the more massive elephants would resist changes to their forward state of motion more than the less massive elephants. Thus, according to Newton's first law of motion, the more massive elephants are said to have greater inertia.