Newtons 2nd Law (1 Viewer)

[vizman]

Hey guys i've got this assessment task on the Newton Car Experiment, im year 10. One of the questions was How does the Newton car demonstrate Newton’s second law?

I was just wondering if my answer is remotely correct.

Newton’s second law refers to the relationship of a body when it is acted on by a force. The rate at which a body’s speed changes (acceleration) is directly proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to the mass of the body. In the Newton car experiment, the different number of elastic bands when the mass (brass weights) were kept constant the Newton car was shown to accelerate at a faster rate according to certain observations, this also resulted in a higher recorded distance as the number of elastic bands was increased. When the elastic bands were kept constant and the masses varied, this too also resulted in an increase in the distance ascertained. When both the masses and the elastic bands were increased this resulted in an even larger increase in the distance recorded. From this we can deduce that acceleration is dependant upon the size of the force, but, also dependant upon the mass of a body, mathematically this law can be summarised as F=ma.

Regards,

Viz

 

[insert-username]

Newton’s second law refers to the relationship of a body when it is acted on by a force.

Close, but the wording is just a little off. Newton's Second Law of Motion actually refers to the state of motion of an object as it is acted upon by an external force. The force changes the object's state of motion by producing an acceleration (which can be positive, speeding up, or negative, slowing down). Your mathematical summary is correct, though you may want to add that F = force, m = mass, and a = acceleration.


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