Chapter 4 & 5 (Unit 2)

Introducing Forces & Newtons Laws

How Forces Affect Motion

So, you learned that kinematics is predicting and describing an objects motion in terms of its displacement, velocity, and acceleration. The branch of Physics that describes why objects move the way they do is called dynamics and it generally deals with forces. Together, kinematics and dynamics form a branch of Physics called mechanics, which will be the majority of what you learn in Grade 11 Physics.

Newtons Laws
NEWTONS FIRST LAW: An object at rest or in uniform motion will remain at rest or in uniform motion unless acted on by an external force! Fnet=0

Newtons Laws
NEWTONS SECOND LAW: Force is the product of mass and acceleration, or, acceleration is the quotient of the force and the mass. F = ma

Newtons Laws
NEWTONS THIRD LAW: For every action force on object B due to object A, there is a reaction force, equal in magnitude but opposite in direction, due to object B acting back on object A. FA on B = -FB on A

Inertia

What happens when youre sitting in any moving vehicle and it suddenly starts to slow down? How about when the vehicle turns to the left?

Inertia

So, your body wants to continue in the same motion it was going to begin with this is the Law of Inertia! Law of Inertia: Inertia is the tendency of an object to remain in its current state of motion. The amount of an objects inertia is directly related to its mass.

Inertia

Galileo wanted to understand why objects do this.

Inertia

Galileos thought experiment challenged the commonly held belief that an objects uniform (aka never changing) motion is caused by a continued force.

Instead, he viewed uniform motion as being a state just as natural as rest.

Galileo identified the natural tendency of mass to continue doing what it is already doing it wants to continue in uniform motion or remain at rest.

Inertia

Inertia

Frames of Reference and Inertia

There are many frames of reference for which you can use for any problem, but some make problemsolving much easier than others. If you are in a car that is driving at a constant velocity and the driver suddenly slams on the breaks, causing you to fly forward, then in your frame of reference you were moving and then suddenly brought to a stop. How would you see it in the cars frame of reference?

Frames of Reference and Inertia

An inertial frame of reference is one in which a the object is at rest or moving at constant velocity. A non-inertial frame of reference is one in which the objects velocity is changing (it is accelerating). Newtons Laws are only valid in inertial frames of reference!

How Forces Affect Motion

What forces could explain each of the following?

Common Forces

What are some common forces?

Inertial Mass vs. Gravitational Mass

Inertial mass is the net external force that must act on a mass in order to change its motion. (F=mg) Gravitational mass is the mass that allows for objects to interact (gravitational law) Inertial mass and gravitational mass are fundamentally the same! They are just different manifestations of the same properties.

Gravitational Force and Weight

So, inertial mass and gravitational mass are basically the same thing. We also know that the inertia of an object is directly related to its weight. Why can an astronaut on the moon jump so much higher than they can on Earth?

Gravitational Force and Weight

If an astronaut has a mass of 60kg on Earth, then they still have that mass on the moon. However, an astronaut weighs less on the moon than on Earth. This creates a clear distinction between mass and weight. You always have a specific mass, no matter where you are. Weight, however, is influenced by the force of gravity.

Gravitational Force and Weight

Weight is defined as the force of gravity acting on a mass (F = mg). We will ALWAYS use mass when doing Physics.

Gravitational Force and Weight

Aristotle believed that more massive objects will fall faster, and less massive objects will fall slower. He predicted that a mass ten time greater would fall ten times faster.

Galileo reasoned that a large mass would have more inertia that a smaller mass, and so a greater force would be required to change the motion of a larger mass than a smaller mass.

Gravitational Force and Weight

So, he thought that since the gravitational force on a large mass is greater than the gravitational force on a small mass, the masses should move the same under the influence of gravity.

What do you think?

Gravitational Force and Weight

So, at any given location, and in the absence of air resistance, all objects will fall with the same acceleration! This is called the acceleration due to gravity, which is denoted by the letter g.

Gravitational Force and Weight

Gravitational Force and Weight

DO NOT FORGET: Mass is not weight!

If your mass is 78kg, then you actually weigh: Fg = mg = (78kg)(-9.81m/s2) = 756N [down]

Model Problem 1
Calculate the weight of a 5.8kg mass on the surface of the moon.

Model Problem 2
A student standing on a scientific spring scale on Earth finds that she weighs 792N. Find her mass.

Friction

When Galileo developed his principles of mechanics, he attributed many phenomena to frictional forces and he was right! Frictional forces are different than gravitational or magnetic forces because they are contact forces. You must have contact for there to be friction!

Friction

Static frictional forces (Ffs) are those that exist when you begin to move an object from rest (you must overcome it for the object to move). Kinetic frictional forces (Ffk) are this that exist when the object is moving (kinetic = movement). Static frictional forces are always more difficult to overcome (larger) than kinetic frictional forces.

Friction

The strength of a frictional force can change based on the surfaces that you are dealing with. While some surfaces creating more friction than others, all surfaces create some friction. The force of friction is actually an electromagnetic force acting between the surface atoms of one object and those of another. They do not weld together, however, because there are small amounts of air, moisture, and other contaminates on the surfaces.

Friction

When you push on an object that was initially at rest, static friction pushes back with exactly the same magnitude as the applied force, until the object is pushed hard enough to move.

The stickiness value that determines how difficult it is to slide an object on a surface is called the coefficient of friction.
The coefficient of friction is different for static (s)and kinetic friction (k).

Friction

Friction

The force of friction not only depends on the surface materials, but also on the magnitude of the forces that are being exerted. Whenever any surface exerts a force on a surface (wall, floor, road, etc), that surface will exert a force back on the object in a direction perpendicular to the surface (Newtons third law). This is called the normal force (FN)

Friction

We are only able to calculate approximations of friction, because of its atomic and molecular roots. As such, our calculations must follow a couple of rules:

1. The mass of the object must be evenly distributed.

2. We cannot account for certain plastics and rubbers that have natural properties that often do not fit in our model of friction (e.g. ice-gripping tires) 3. The two interacting surfaces must be flat (they cannot have spikes or ridges)

Friction

Model Problem
During the winter, owners of pickup trucks often place sandbags in the rear of their vehicles. Calculate the increased static force of friction between the rubber tires and wet concrete resulting from the addition of 200kg of sandbags in the back of the truck.

Free Body Diagrams

Weve seen many cases where more than one force is exerted on an object, but how do we know if those forces are causing the object to move? We must look at how all of the forces act together that is to say that we need to split our forces into their vector components and find the sum in order to make predictions. This sum of the vectors is called the net force (Fnet)

Free Body Diagrams

We can use free body diagrams to represent all of the forces that are acting on an object. We only look at the forces acting on the object not the forces that the object is exerting on other objects (because they have no effect on the motion of the object itself)

Free Body Diagram

When drawing a free body diagram, you represent the object by a single dot (sometimes called a point mass). Each force that is acting on the object is represented by an arrow, which points in the direction of the force and is a length that is representative of the magnitude of the force. Forces that are of the same magnitude should be drawn as approximately the same length.

Free Body Diagrams

Free Body Diagrams

How would we draw the free body diagram of a textbook being pushed along a table?

Example Problem
If you are pushing a wooden block across a wooden floor at a constant velocity with 475N of force, then what is the mass of the block?