Newton’s Laws
This law says an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion, unless an unbalanced force acts on it.
What is Newton’s first law (inertia)?
This force pulls objects toward the center of Earth.
What is gravity?
Shane and Susan push a box with 25 N each from opposite directions. This happens to the box.
What is it does not move (balanced forces)?
This is the variable a scientist changes on purpose.
What is the independent variable?
When a bat hits a softball, the ball travels farther when this force is greater.
What is the collision force (the force of the bat hitting the ball)?
A balloon car moves forward as gas rushes out the back. This law of motion explains it.
What is Newton’s third law?
Wrestler A weighs 168 pounds and Wrestler B weighs 171 pounds. This wrestler experiences the greater force due to gravity.
Who is Wrestler B (the one with more mass)?
A soccer ball is rolling, and Ramon kicks it in the same direction. The ball does this.
What is speeds up?
This is the variable that is measured to see the result of the experiment.
What is the dependent variable?
Aluminum bats are swung 10 mph faster than wooden bats of the same mass. Which one should the coach use to hit the ball with greater force?
What are aluminum bats?
Newton’s third law says for every action there is an equal and this kind of reaction.
What is opposite?
A scientist weighs more on Jupiter than on Mercury. Jupiter has far more mass, so planets with more mass exert this kind of gravitational force.
What is a stronger gravitational force?
You push a box with 30 N to the right and 10 N to the left. This is the net force.
What is 20 N to the right?
Students test whether adding weights to a toy car changes how fast it rolls down a ramp. The weights they add are this type of variable.
What is the independent variable?
Boxes of crackers are dropped from a truck to the ground. If the boxes had less mass, the force on the crackers would do this, and fewer crackers would break.
What is decrease?
This law says a bigger force on the same object causes a greater acceleration (F = ma).
What is Newton’s second law?
A 2 kg yoga ball and an 8 kg medicine ball are lifted. The medicine ball has the greater gravitational attraction with Earth because of this property.
What is its larger mass?
A basketball rolls to a stop on a gym floor. This force is what stopped it.
What is friction?
In that same test, the speed of the car going down the ramp is this type of variable.
What is the dependent variable?
To keep crackers from breaking when boxes are dropped from a truck to the ground, a tool should do this to the boxes’ speed as they reach the ground.
What is decrease (slow down) their speed?
A rower pushes the paddle backward against the water, and the boat moves forward. Name the law and the force pair.
What is the third law: the paddle pushes the water back, and the water pushes the boat forward?
This quantity stays the same on every planet, even though weight changes.
What is mass?
A student says the basketball stopped because its “initial force ran out.” Use Newton’s first law to correct this idea.
What is: a moving object keeps moving unless an unbalanced force (friction) acts on it, so force isn’t “used up”?
Students keep the same ramp, the same ramp height, and the same surface for every trial so only the weights change. Variables that are kept the same like this are called this.
What are controlled variables (constants)?
The force of a collision depends on these two properties of the moving object.
What are mass and speed?