Newton's Laws of Motion

When you try to push a wall, it pushes your right back! The harder you
push the more pressure is felt by your hands. This is what Newton's third
law of motion deals with.

Third law of motion: If a body exerts a force on another, there is an equal

and opposite force, called a reaction on the first body by the second.

Do the force and its reaction cancel each other? No, as they are acting on
different bodies. For equal and opposite forces to cancel, they must act on
the same body. In the case of pushing of the wall, the wall feels the action
and the hands the reaction.

Also forces always exist in pairs. If there is a force on the wall, then there
has to be a force on the hands. It is impossible to have a single isolated
force.

This law is true for bodies at rest and for bodies in motion. Bodies may or
may not be in contact. A magnet repels another magnet from a distance
and also gets repelled right back without being in contact.

Let us take the case of a person standing in an elevator. Let this person be
standing on a weighing machine placed in the elevator. It will be interesting
to note what reading the weighing machine will show under the following
conditions
 N = mg

Elevator at rest (answer: equal to the actual weight of the person)

N = mg

Elevator moving up, or down with uniform velocity (answer: equal to

the actual weight of the person)
 N > mg

Elevator moving up with uniform acceleration (answer: greater than the

actual weight of the person)

N < mg

Elevator moving down with uniform acceleration (answer: less than the
actual weight of the person)

A helicopter of mass 1000 kg rises with a vertical acceleration of 15 m/s2.

The crew and the passengers weigh 300 kg. Give the magnitude and
direction of (a) force on the floor by the crew and the passengers (b) force
of the rotor of the helicopter, on the surrounding air (c) force on the
helicopter due to the surrounding air. Acceleration due to gravity = 10 m/s2.
(a) Force on the floor by the crew and passengers = 300 (15 +10) = 7500 N

(b) Force of the rotor on the surrounding air

=(1000 + 300)(15 + 10) = 32500N downward.

(c) From Newton's third law of motion, the air will have an equal and
opposite reaction on the helicopter rotor blades = 32500 N upward.

Conservation of Momentum
Let us take two bodies say two balls. We assume that these balls are in a
place where no external forces are acting on them. Such a place would be
called an isolated system. Let one ball be moving along a straight line with
velocity v1 and let the other ball be moving with a velocity v2. Now these
velocities are different. So, as both balls are moving along the same line,
they will hit each other at some point of time if the ball, which is following is
moving at a faster speed. If you were to walk exactly behind some one, and
walk faster than, you will run into this person ahead of you if you do not
take evasive action!

After the collision the balls will move with new velocities v1' and v2'. What is
the relation between the way the balls move before and after the collision?
The answer lies in the law of conservation of momentum

Law of conservation of momentum: In the absence of external forces,

the total momentum of the system is conserved.

So using this law we can write the following equation about the two
colliding balls, having mass m1 and m2.

m1v1 + m2v2 = m1v1' + m2v2'

This is a very neat and a universally applicable law. It is true whether the
balls are planets! or atoms!

A shell of mass 0.020 kg is fired by a gun of mass 100 kg. If the muzzle
speed of the shell is 80 m/s, what is the recoil speed of the gun?

Let m and v be the mass and velocity of the shell and M and V the mass
and velocity of the gun.

V = mv/M

=0.020 x 80/100 = 0.016 m/s