Monday, October 10, 2011

10-10 Newton's1st/2nd laws

HMWK tonight (102/103) Today in class: Demonstration of shooting a monkey/bear, depending on the class :-)  showing, once again, that gravity does not affect horizontal motion of an object, and that projectiles (things moving through the air) curve due to this effect.
Notes:  Inertia and Newton's 2nd law (below)
Announcement:  If you need a book (a real book), Seckman has given FHS back some of our texts they borrowed in the past.  See Mr. F. for a text to check out.
Notes:
Newton's 1st Law (Inertia):  An object in motion remains in motion, an object at rest remains at rest... UNTIL/UNLESS acted upon by a net force. 
Definition:  Inertia is:  Resistance to Acceleration
remember, acceleration is any change in velocity, which may be resulting from a change in speed OR direction.
Inertia is based on mass.  More mass --> more inertia!
Newton's 2nd law:  An object's acceleration depends on 2 things:  Net force acting on it AND its mass.
This one has an equation:  Fnet = m * a         (net force = mass * acceleration)
Units:  mass (kg)  acceleration (m/s^2) and force is (kg*m/s^2) or just N (Newton).  (Newtons are a derived unit - short for kg*m/s^2)

Practice problem: 
5N net force
2 kg mass
a = ?

How to solve:  Fnet = m*a     <-- divide both sides of this equation by "m" to get:  Fnet/m = a.

Put in numbers and you get 5N / 2kg = a         Simplify to 2.5 N/kg. 

**But you say N/kg isn't acceleration?  Sure it is!  Substitute kg*m/s^2 in for N in the above answer, and you should see that kg are in the numerator and denominator; they cancel, leaving 2.5 m/s^2.

Some classes also asked questions and had answers worked out for tonight's homework.

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