Newtons first law

A body remains at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless it is acted on by an external force. PRINCIPLE OF LEARNING

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW WHICH FORCES TO PUT ON A FREE BODY FORCE DIAGRAM THESE MUST BE FORCES ACTING ON THE BODY AND NOT BY THE BODY
Terminal speed Consider a steel ball bearing being released to fall through water in a container. The ball is seen to fall to the bottom of the container quite fast. But if there is oil instead of water, the ball takes more time to fall. This is due to the much greater resistance (also called drag or viscosity) of the oil. The greater the speed of a car the greater is the force with which the air hits the car. Hence the air resistance (drag) on the car also increases. Remember then: the greater is the speed the greater is the drag. Now let us consider an object falling through a liquid.

If the object is falling from rest then initial speed is 0 and hence the drag force is 0 i.e. only the weight is acting. Hence the object starts to accelerate. Then this acceleration causes the speed to increase. The drag will also increase (remember the car). Hence the resultant force on the object becomes less because

resultant force downwards = weight drag force Since the resultant force becomes less then the acceleration decreases and hence although the speed continues to increase, yet it does not increase as fast as before. The weight is constant but the drag is increasing as the speed is increasing. When the drag becomes equal and opposite to the weight, then the resultant force on the object is 0. Hence the object stops accelerating and the speed becomes constant. This final speed is called the TERMINAL SPEED. (like the final stage of a bus being called the TERMINUS, or the final sickness i.e. the sickness with which a person dies is called TERMINAL sickness) PRINCIPLE OF LEARNING UNDERSTAND WHY THIS SPEED IS CALLED TERMINAL SPEED. Hence a graph of speed against time will be as follows:

The linear momentum of a body s defined as the product of the mass of the body times its velocity. Note that the direction of momentum is important. Hence momentum is a vector.

NEWTONS 2ND LAW The acceleration acting on a body is directly proportional to the resultant force and takes place in the direction of this force.

F is directly proportional to a means that if F gets doubled then a also gets doubled. Or if F increases to 4F then a also increases to 4a. Whenever two physical quantities are directly proportional to each other then one can represent them by an equation. e.g since F a

then one can write F = (constant)a This constant of proportion is called MASS. Hence F = ma The following is a graph of how force F and acceleration a are related to each other.