Newton’s Second Law Of Motion Essays Examples

Newton’s second law of motion is used to explain the behavior of objects when unbalanced or unequal forces act on them (Lawrence and Morningstar 5). The law particularly explains the acceleration of the object after being subjected to these forces. According to this law, an object’s acceleration is dependent on two primary variables; the net force that is acting upon this object and the object’s mass (Lawrence and Morningstar 5). The acceleration is directly proportional to the force (that is, if the force increases, the acceleration increases) and is indirectly proportional to mass (that is, if the mass of the object increases, the acceleration decreases) (Lawrence and Morningstar 5).Any experiment conducted accurately and where the results are also recorded accurately should exhibit this characteristic or feature, Unfortunately, incorrect recording of data can lead to incorrect results where the relationship between the three variables does not appear not as dictated by Newton’s second law of motion.
In the experiment I conducted, the force and acceleration data are indeed consistent with Newton’s second law of motion. From the recorded results, it can be seen that force is directly proportional to acceleration. As the increases, the acceleration likewise increases. It is, however, important to note that this relationship is observed more clearly when the mass of the object is kept constant. If adjustments are made to both the mass and the force of the object, the relationship might not be established so clearly.
This relationship is clear from the plot of force vs. acceleration that I drew. As mentioned earlier, many experiments are prone to human error and when the data points are marked on the plot, they may not be oriented along a straight line which is drawn to prove Newton’s second law of motion in relation to force and acceleration. However, in my plot, all the data points were along a singular axis, and I was, therefore, able to draw a straight line. If all the data points were not a singular axis, the straight line fit would pass through the error bars in my plot of force versus acceleration. This straight line shows the direct proportionality between force and acceleration.
The plot I drew from the force and acceleration data collected also prove Newton’s second law of motion because after calculating the slope of the straight line, the value equals the system mass within experimental uncertainty. This is derivable from the second law of motion whereby a= Fnet/m. Since the plot is for Fnet vs. a, the slope of the graph should give the net mass, and this is exactly what happens in this case. This is because the second law of motion can be rearranged to give m= Fnet/a where m is the mass. The slope should give the original mass of the object within an experimental error range.
Newton’s law can only work if all forces are accounted for. The first force, in this case, is the one acting on the object. The next force that has to be accounted for is the gravitational force that is exerted by the earth on the object in question (Lucas et al. 24). The other force that can be accounted for is the one provided by the support, for example, the table on which the object is placed. The latter two are perpendicular and have to balance so that acceleration can be witnessed in the horizontal direction in which the normal force is being exerted on the object (Lucas et al. 24). Therefore, if the gravitational force and the force external by the support do not balance, there might also be vertical acceleration and this would affect my overall data whereby I would be forced to account for this vertical acceleration.

Works Cited

Lawrence, Liam, and Alan Morningstar. "Newton’s Laws of Motion." (2014).
Lucas, George L., Francis W. Cooke, and Elizabeth A. Friis. Mechanics. Springer New York, 1999.