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2: Force

  • Page ID
    62988
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    • 2.1: Forces, Fundamental and Composite
      We now understand how to handle motion in all its forms, but really we haven’t done much in the way of physics, because we haven’t explained what causes these different motions.
    • 2.2: Macroscopic Forces
      We make a reckoning of all the observable forces we will encounter between objects in the macroscopic realm, keeping in mind that these forces are just models we have constructed to bridge the fundamental forces to something we can work with in our everyday world.
    • 2.3: Forces as Interactions
      Forces are pushes or pulls between pairs of objects. As simple as this sounds, strict adherence to this fact can be difficult to understand intuitively. Here we develop the "physics language" needed to develop more correct physics intuition.
    • 2.4: Effects of Force on Motion
      Now that we know some of the properties of force, we can at last look at the effect that forces exerted on objects has on their motions.
    • 2.5: Applications of Newton's Laws
      We discuss some of the more straightforward applications of Newton's laws of motion.
    • 2.6: Additional Twists - Constraints
      Here we focus on more elements of problem-solving. We have all the tools we need, so this will not involve any new physics, but the idea is to introduce some common themes that come up in physics mechanics problems.
    • Sample Problems

    Thumbnail: A line drawing of two ice skaters demonstrating Newton's third law. Image used wtih permission (CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported; Benjamin Crowell).


    This page titled 2: Force is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Tom Weideman directly on the LibreTexts platform.

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