Newton's Laws Continued


Newton's Laws Continued.....

Newton's first and second laws were explained in last week’s article. The third law was Also discussed in a previous article. This week I will give an overview of those articles and provide some experiments and additional information.

First, lets review Newton's first, second and third laws.

Newton's First Law- Objects at rest will stay at rest, or objects in motion will stay in motion, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

Newton's Second Law- The acceleration of an object is directly related to the force exerted on that object and oppositely related to the mass of that object.

Newton's Third Law- For every action there is always an opposite and equal reaction.

Experiments-

Have the child dribble a basketball. Next, have the child dribble a tennis ball. Finally, have the child dribble or bounce them both at the same time.

Which is easier to bounce? Which do you think has more mass? Which would travel further if both were thrown with the same force?

Continue this experiment-

Now throw the basketball down to the ground and see how far you can make it bounce into the air. Do the same with the tennis ball. Which one bounce higher? To make the basketball bounce as high as the tennis ball a lot more force is required.

Next, try placing the tennis ball on top of the basketball. Hold the balls about 5 feet off the ground. You may need to stand on a porch, or step. Gently drop the balls. What happened?

When the balls were dropped the energy from the basketball was transferred to the tennis ball and the tennis ball flew high into the air. Can you make the basketball bounce as high as the tennis ball did when it was dropped while on the basketball? Not likely. The basketball has a great deal of mass and it would be very difficult to bounce it that high.

Question-
What is harder to stop, a soccer ball traveling at 5 miles per hour or a freight train traveling at 5 miles per hour? The train has MUCH more mass so it is much harder to stop.

Mystery Explained-

In 1590 Galileo discovered that the earths gravity pulls objects toward earth at 32 feet per second, regardless of their mass. They say he took some students to the leaning tower of Pisa. The students remained on the ground as he climbed to the top with a bunch of stones. Galileo then dropped one 1-lb stone at the same time that he dropped one 10lb stone from the top of the building.

The copyright of the article Newton's Laws Continued in Homeschool Science is owned by Lisa Hawkins. Permission to republish Newton's Laws Continued in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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