Mechanics and Newton’s Law

For billion of years, the Earth has been tirelessly orbiting around the Sun. This repetitive motion was kept by the virtue of gravitational force. And for us to understand the whole story about this, we need not to travel away from the Earth. Instead we just study these things in our planet. We can study them by relating the motions of vehicles in a curved road, a plane making a landing on the airport, and many more. And we can understand all of these through Physics and its branch Mechanics.

Physics is the study of the basic principles that include light and matter, in order to discover and understand these implications of these laws, we can use the scientific method. There assumptions that there are rules and guidelines that should be followed for the universe to function. And these rules are partially understood by human beings (Crowell 22). While Mechanics is the branch of Physics that deals with the study of motion, matter, force and associated relationships between them (Alinea et al 29).

And about 300 years ago, a brilliant mind was able to understand and relate his studies to everything that is concerned and related to the unanswered questions about the universe. This man named Isaac Newton came up with different conclusions and theories that are now fully accepted by the science society. His experiments gave answers to those questions and he left us with more things to think and discover.

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When he was about 23 years old, Sir Isaac Newton developed theories about gravitation in 1666, he claimed that all things fall to the earth because of a force called gravity keeps everything to be attracted and pulled down to earth. This idea came up when he was seating below an apple tree, then suddenly an apple fell down to his head. And on that day on he wondered why everything falls to the earth. Sir Isaac Newton Concluded that the Force between two mass containing bodies is given by the formula: F=G x (mass1 x mass2)/ (r) (r)

Where F= force, G is the gravitational constant which is 6.67 x 10-11 N m2 kg-2, M1 and M2 are the masses of the two objects, and r2 is the square of their distance from each other. This experiment determines the attraction of objects through their masses. We can relate this to large quantities like stars, planets and other heavenly bodies. And even humans have attraction of forces from other things but these forces are very small and negligible in nature.

About 20 years later, in 1686, he presented his three laws of motions-the Law of Inertia, the Law of Acceleration, and the Law of Interaction. These laws are to define, study, and understand the principles of forces and their interactions with each other along with other aspects which include acceleration Gravity, mass, and velocity.

The first Law of Motion is called the Law of Inertia. It states that when a body is acted upon by a zero net force, the velocity remains constant. This velocity can be either at zero or non-zero magnitude (Alinea et al 35). This means that an object at rest, when acted upon by a zero net force, the object remains at rest. And if a moving object is acted upon by a zero net force, the object remains at that velocity and direction.

Imagine a car moving in a straight direction, if you exert two equal forces on either sides of the car, which will cancel each other and the result will be a zero net force, the motion of the car will remain the same. And this is also true with objects at zero motion or at rest. A good example of this law in our daily life is when you are sleeping. Assume that when you sleep, you were at zero motion. And your wife suddenly pushed you to the other side of the bed, and the tendency for you is to fall on the floor because the force acted upon you was non-zero. If you have another person on your other side, and that person will exert a force equal to what your wife will exert at the same time but opposite in direction, you will surely not to fall.

Newton’s second law of motion was the Law of acceleration. It states that a body acted upon by an external on-zero net force will accelerate. And the net force is mathematically equal to the mass of the body times the acceleration (Alinea et al 35).

Newton also made an explanation to the tendency of an object to move when acted by an external non-zero force. He gave the formula F=ma, Where “F” is the force acted upon the object, “m” is the mass of the object, and ”a” is the acceleration of the object due to the exertion of the force. Experiments also show that the acceleration is inversely proportional to the mass, given by the formula a=F/m.

This law explains why objects move when they are hit. An example is the car accident of former senator Rene Saguisag. According to the news, the van of the Mr. Saguisag was hit by a truck and it went about 20 to 30 meters before going stop. The Law of acceleration can explained to what happened to the van. Because the van was hit only in one side, the tendency of the van is to move and accelerate in the direction of the external force acted upon it.

Another example is when you are walking down a street and suddenly you was hit by a muscular man about 200 Kilograms, and the tendency is you will move according to the direction that man was going and you will be accelerating due to the force acted upon you by that man. It happens all the time, even between pre-school pupils.

The last law of motion is the Law of Interaction. It was stated that if an object A applies a force on another object B, object B is also applying the same amount of force but in opposite direction. And that their net force is zero (Crowell 145).

It means that if you exert a force or effort to an object, the object exert the same amount of force but in opposite direction. For example, if you open a door, the door exerts equal amount of force to effort you exert on it. Much like of”what you do to others, they do it unto you”.

Now that these laws explain and answer our questions about the universe, we can now relate it from the simplest parts of our daily life to the most complex structure of the universe. And for further analyzing and continuous exploration of the still undiscovered mysteries of the universe, we can develop and sustain answers to future questions that will make us enlighten our minds.

And we need to cooperate and be part of the growing family of science that rooted from the intuitive and curiosity of the human brain to gain more knowledge in order to attain the best for our lives. And if I am not mistaken, we deserve to be the beings that were created to be alive. And every mind has the will to understand the whole of life, and what lies behind all those mysteries. And maybe we can account that for our Creator.

Works Cited

1. Crowell, Benjamin. Newtonian Physics. California: Light and Matter, 1998
2. Alinea, Allan L., et al. General Physics I. Philippines: C & E Publishing, Inc, 2006
3. ”Newton’s Law of Motion.” 1 December 2007.

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