Force, Pressure, and Newton's Laws of Motion

Study Notes

Force and Pressure

Force is said to exist when one object exerts influence upon another. In the physical world, forces can cause things like objects falling from great heights due to gravity, airplanes flying through clouds because of lift, or pencils floating in midair with magnetism. Forces are also responsible for making your chair stay where it is while you sit down. When you push your armchair away from the table, you create a force called friction, which keeps the two surfaces apart, so they don’t stick together. This kind of force between solid materials is known as contact force.

Pressure is related to force. Think of it this way: If you had enough people pushing against something on all sides, their combined weight would make it feel heavy. That feeling comes from the pressure they put on it. Just as there are different kinds of forces, such as magnetic force or electrical force, there are three types of pressures:

Atmospheric pressure: This is the type of pressure we experience every day outside—the weight of the atmosphere pressing down on us. It makes our lungs work harder to get oxygen into them.
Ocean pressure: Water has its own special kind of pressure deep under the sea, where ocean currents move along.
Hydrostatic pressure: This is the kind of pressure water creates by itself, without any other help. For example, if you go swimming in the shallow part of a lake, there isn't much hydrostatic pressure around you. But if you dive deeper, the water gets heavier and puts more pressure on everything below.

In physics, these forms of pressure are often measured in units called atmospheres (atms) or pounds per square inch (psi). Atmosphere refers to how many times the normal weight of Earth's atmosphere presses on something; psi means pounds of pressure over a surface area the size of one square inch.

The relationship between force and pressure can be seen from Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion. These laws describe how forces affect motion. They say that:

An object will continue moving unless acted upon by another force.
The amount of force needed to change how fast an object moves depends on how big or small it already is.
The bigger the force on an object, the faster it goes.

Newton's third law also tells us what happens when one object hits another hard. According to his second law, both objects need a lot of force to keep going at their new speeds. So after hitting each other, they both lose speed until they come to rest again—this process is called deceleration.

One specific form of force is friction. As mentioned before, this force always acts opposite to the direction of movement. Friction occurs when one material rubs against another, causing heat energy to be released. Another kind of force is gravity, which pulls things towards each other. There is even centripetal force involved when objects move in circles. All these various types of forces play important roles in everyday life, helping us understand why things happen the way they do.

Description

Test your knowledge about forces, pressure, and their relationship to motion as described by Isaac Newton's Laws. Learn about different types of forces such as friction, gravity, and centripetal force, as well as atmospheric, ocean, and hydrostatic pressures.