What is a
Force?
The
definition for force is a push or a pull. For example, when
you are doing your assignment. You push and pull your pen or pencil
Sometimes two
forces act on something. For example, two people were pushing a shopping cart.
If they were pushing in the same direction, you would add the two forces
together. The sum of the forces is called the net force. Right now, the net
force is an unbalanced force. An unbalanced force is a force that changes an
object¡¯s motion or causes it to accelerate. The arrows show different forces
and their direction, the wider the arrow the stronger the force.
You can also have two forces acting in opposite
directions. When the forces are equal and acting in different directions they
balance each other out. When this happens, there is no net force because it is
a balanced force. If one person was at the front of the shopping cart pushing
backwards, and one person was pushing with equal force in the opposite
direction, the forces would be balanced, and the shopping cart would not move.
Back to the car running out of gas example, your friend might push the car in
the opposite direction you are. If he does, your two equal forces in opposite
directions balance out to zero net force. This means the car will not move.
Something else can happen when forces push or pull
in opposite directions. If one force is more powerful than the other, they will
not balance out to 0 net force.
This is because one force is stronger than the other, so the weak force is not
strong enough to completely balance out the stronger force. Suppose there is a
person in the front of a shopping cart and one on the other end. They are
pushing in opposite directions, but one of them is pushing with a much greater
force. Because the forces are not balanced, the shopping cart is moving in the
direction that the person with the stronger force is pushing. Back to the car
running out of gas example again, it would be like if your friend was pushing
in the opposite direction you were, but this time you weren¡¯t pushing with
equal forces. If your friend was pushing harder than you, the forces would not
balance each other. The car would roll away from the gas station.
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