ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

Physics: Newton's First Law 961 Views


Share It!


Description:

Newton's first law is the one about objects at rest tending to stay at rest and objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

Language:
English Language
Subjects:

Transcript

00:02

Newton's first law or why we want to stay in bed. if I could find the right one...

00:08

a shapes motion - all right net forces -object grass motion -all [Newton's laws listed]

00:24

right unbalanced forces- isn't that

00:26

Congress ? people are all unbalanced? who would ever want that job?

00:32

anyway alright well Tiger pounds in constant motion, the real moral friction,

00:36

really terminal velocity ,up now it's a great film Schwarzenegger. alright we're

00:41

done.

00:43

hey have you ever run out of gas? just been driving along belting out Taylor

00:49

Swift at the top of your lungs when all of a sudden your car dies? look at the [car going down the road]

00:53

fuel gauge see that the needle is way on the wrong side of e, maybe you're lucky

00:57

and there's a gas station a few blocks away and maybe you're unlucky because

01:00

you inherited grandma's 1974 El Camino, yeah that thing's like an aircraft

01:06

carrier, but wait why'd the stupid car even stop in the first place?

01:09

well doesn't an object in motion tend to stay in motion? why did it stop? we're on

01:14

a perfectly flat stretch of road what force acted against it? all goes back [road shown]

01:18

to Newton's first law of motion. remember Sir Isaac Newton crazy smart British guy

01:23

lived in the 1600s. not the best at interpersonal relations? old Ike here

01:29

discovered three laws of motion and a lot of physics is built on those three

01:33

laws. we'll be taking a deep dive into each of those laws in future sessions

01:37

but today we're gonna be looking at numero uno. Newton's first law of motion

01:41

is that you do not talk about motion. sorry that was Newton's first law of [chalk board with newton's laws]

01:46

Fight Club. his first law of motion is that an object's motion or lack of

01:51

motion will stay constant unless a force acts against it. so in order for an

01:57

object's motion to be constant that means no force can be acting on it there

02:02

right ?you no see there's this thing called net

02:05

force, and no it's not the next hit drama on CBS this fall. net force means that

02:13

combined sum of all forces acting on an object and if the net force is acting on

02:18

an object balance each other out, well the motion will be constant. so let's

02:22

take a look at the net forces acting on one specific object. and that object is

02:25

yep your butt. don't worry we're not gonna go look at the physics of shaking [boy falls down]

02:30

your moneymaker. for that you can explore schmoops special course on twerking. but

02:35

chances are that you're sitting down right now and you may not think that

02:38

sitting on your tail has anything to do with physics, but Oh your chair says

02:42

otherwise. right now as you sit there gravity is exerting a force on your body

02:46

it's trying to pull you toward the center of the earth but your chair is [man sits in a chair]

02:50

holding you up exerting a force perpendicular to its surface. that force

02:55

is called the normal force. when force is applied to a solid object that object's

03:00

shape changes. it might deform a little or it might deform a lot. even if the chair

03:06

is made of solid granite and a cute little mouse is sleeping on it, there's

03:10

still a tiny amount of deformation because a force even a tiny one is being [mouse sits on rock chair]

03:15

applied to the chair .now if that force isn't balanced by a counter force

03:19

shedder the mouse here would just, well sink into the chair. solid objects

03:24

maintain their shape which is what makes them, you know solid. so they act against

03:28

the deformation by pushing against whatever is causing that deformation. now

03:34

if a brontosaurus tried to sit in that chair the chair may not be able to

03:37

maintain it's shape. the force of gravity acting on the dinosaur might overcome

03:41

the normal force of the chair which is why you'll never see a depiction of a

03:46

brontosaurus taking a load off in a Natural History Museum. so in the case of [dinosaur in museum]

03:50

you sitting on a chair the net force equals zero. the downward force of

03:54

gravity is balanced by the upward normal force of the chair. well here on earth

03:59

that's the case for any object that's not moving. but what about an object that

04:03

is actually in motion and has a constant velocity? well suppose a car has

04:07

cruise control. you're on the highway and you press a button and your car

04:11

maintains a steady speed, and you take a nap. don't actually do that last part. as [navigation system shown]

04:16

we've learned the hard way your car can't just cruise without exerting force

04:19

in burning gasoline, but if the motion is constant, well why is any force needed to

04:25

maintain speed? well it's time to talk about the F word, and no no the other

04:30

f word. we're talking about friction friction is a force exerted by one

04:35

object on another object when the two objects slide across each other. [friction defined]

04:41

in some of our previous lessons we looked at imaginary scenarios in a world

04:45

where we could pretend friction doesn't exist .but as we've learned from when we

04:49

slide past the end of the slip and slide friction does exist. and it can sometimes

04:54

be painful. there's no escaping friction at least not here on earth. think you can [girl grimaces after getting scrapes]

04:58

roll yourself away from friction? nope a car can tell you that's not true. even an

05:04

airplane flying way up in the atmosphere still encounters drag ,which is friction

05:09

from the air. only in outer space can you truly have a frictionless experience the

05:14

United States launched the Voyager spacecraft in 1977 to study planets in

05:18

our solar system. and it's still traveling through space today. [satellite shown]

05:21

unless aliens have grabbed it and eaten it or something.

05:25

in fact it's traveled outside of our solar system it's still moving because

05:30

while there are no forces stopping it. not even friction. if we're stuck on the

05:34

planet though there's no getting around the gravity thing. sure we can reduce

05:37

friction by making surface as smooth as possible, and we add slippery stuff to

05:42

reduce friction - yeah just go wash your hands to feel how soap reduces friction. [woman grins in a bathroom]

05:47

or do seriously go watch out where those paws of yours have been?

05:51

reducing friction is also why you get oil changes for your car. motor oil

05:57

reduces friction in the engine which makes it work more efficiently, but we

06:01

measure the friction between two objects with the coefficient of friction. if

06:06

you're pulling a German Shepard toward the bathtub you've got a high

06:08

coefficient of friction .if you're dragging a hot knife across the stick of [boy drags dog]

06:13

warm butter you've got a low coefficient of friction. and the markings for a

06:17

lovely piece of toast. we'll get more into this coefficient thing in future

06:20

lessons but if we're using cruise control on our car that means the engine

06:24

is producing enough force to balance out the force of friction. so we move at a

06:29

constant speed until some moron in the fast lane decides to start exiting, and

06:34

if we have to hit the brakes so we don't get killed. [woman drives race car]

06:36

well friction creates heat energy which you know if you've ever rub your hands

06:41

together to keep warm and that heat from friction is why cavemen didn't have to

06:45

eat mammoth sashimi. as we've said friction is a force that

06:48

acts in the opposite direction of movement. we can see that in this diagram

06:51

right here. all right well to achieve constant [chart shown]

06:54

unchanging motion we have to apply force in the direction of motion that's equal

06:58

to the counter force of friction. like cruise control -for like a plane flying

07:03

in the sky so high. think of how many counter balancing forces a 747 flying at

07:08

a steady speed has to deal with. well it's got its jet engines providing

07:12

enough force in the forward direction and balance the friction acting on it in

07:15

the backwards direction. when those net forces add up to zero the plane will be

07:20

at a cruising speed and the pilot can finish his you know word search or [men fly airplane]

07:24

whatever. but gravity is still involved too so there has to be enough lift to

07:28

balance that force out as well otherwise the plane would you know do the opposite

07:33

of lift. but while we're thinking about a large object plummeting to the ground

07:37

let's talk about terminal velocity. not starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

07:41

next time you go skydiving try switching out your parachute for your spare tire.

07:46

then jump out of an airplane and see if your trip down is in a bit more exciting [animation parachutes]

07:51

than it would be with a boring old parachute .when we're traveling through

07:55

the atmosphere we counter drag well drag is a specific

07:58

kind of friction that occurs when an object is moving through a fluid and gas

08:02

air counts as a fluid in this case. the amount of drag on an object depends on a

08:07

few different factors like the density of the fluid ,and the shape of the object.

08:12

and the speed of an object affects the drag as well. the faster it's moving the [jam sandwich shown]

08:18

greater the drag. now in some previous lessons we looked at falling objects and

08:22

said that gravity would provide a constant acceleration of 9.8 meters per

08:25

second squared .but that's not actually the case when you're dealing with drag,

08:30

so let's go back to skydiving. like I said the faster we move through the air

08:33

the more drag acts on us. well eventually we'll reach a point

08:37

where the force of gravity and the force of drag balance each other out, and we'll

08:43

stop accelerating, and just followed a nice easy rate of about 200 kilometers

08:48

an hour. well the point we stopped accelerating is called terminal velocity

08:53

or the end of velocity. and yeah if we don't open our chutes soon it'll [galaxy shown]

08:57

definitely be terminal. well terminal velocity is the highest velocity an

09:01

object can reach in a fall. well when we do open our parachute the terminal

09:06

velocity will drop all the way down to 28 kilometers an hour .the size shape and

09:10

mass of the parachute create much more drag in the air and that force acts in

09:15

counter to the force of gravity slowing us down and letting, us you know live.

09:19

well using a spare tire instead of a parachute? well let's just say that [animation using a parachute]

09:22

falling ...falling that way would be a drag. because well there wouldn't be very much

09:27

drag. so in order to get this rust-bucket moving we have to apply enough force to

09:31

overcome its inertia. Newton's first law is sometimes referred to as the law of

09:35

inertia. and inertia is a property of mass. specifically inertial mass is the

09:41

measure of an object's resistance to acceleration or resistance to a change

09:46

in motion. the more mass something has the more resistance it has to have to [car goes down the road]

09:51

its motion being changed. which makes sense it's easier to pull a

09:55

shopping cart than it is to push a 1974 El Camino because the car has a whole

10:01

lot more mass than the shopping cart. and we're gonna have to put the concept of

10:04

inertia to the tester is going to push the car to the gas station, but we may

10:09

not be able to overcome its resistance to being moved. maybe we can just leave

10:13

it here. it's a about time and get a new car anyway. of course getting a new car

10:17

would involve overcoming dads and neural resistance to open his wallet book. [animation in office] -

10:21

that's a different set of laws.

Up Next

Jane Eyre Summary
123033 Views

When you're about to marry the love of your life, not many things could stop you. However, finding out that your future hubby is keeping his crazy...

Related Videos

What is Shmoop?
91412 Views

Here at Shmoop, we work for kids, not just the bottom line. Founded by David Siminoff and his wife Ellen Siminoff, Shmoop was originally conceived...

ACT Math 4.5 Elementary Algebra
492 Views

ACT Math: Elementary Algebra Drill 4, Problem 5. What is the solution to the problem shown?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 1
1039 Views

AP® English Literature and Composition Passage Drill 1, Problem 1. Which literary device is used in lines 31 to 37?

AP English Literature and Composition 1.1 Passage Drill 2
683 Views

AP® English Literature and Composition Passage Drill 2, Problem 1. What claim does Bacon make that contradicts the maxim "Whatsoever is delig...