Chapter 2

Newton’s Laws of Motion

In this chapter, we leave behind kinematics where we were only concerned with motion, and
begin to look at the forces causing the motion. This is area of physics is called dynamics.
Throughout this section, there are some hidden basic assumptions. For example, we shall
assume that mass is always conserved and can only be redistributed when bodies interact.
The mass of an object (in classical physics) is an intrinsic property of particles which does
not change. Another assumption is that, at any given instant, a body is only affected by the
forces acting on the body at that instant. These all seem obvious to us today, but they are
assumptions, and we can formulate and imagine a universe where things were different.
Another key assumption is that our coordinate system, our reference frame, is not ac-
celerating. Such a reference frame is called an inertial reference frame. We will consider
non-inertial (accelerating) reference frames later.

2.1 The Laws

2.1.1 The First Law of Motion
A particle at rest or in uniform motion continues in that state unless acted on by
a force.
ÿ dv
F = 0 ≈∆ =0
dt

The first law of motion was originally found by Galileo, and was reformulated by Newton
and included in his seminal work, the Principia Mathematica. This law countered the older
Aristotelian view of motion. For Aristotle, he thought that arrows were given a certain kick
by the bow, and they kept moving until they had spent that energy, and then fell straight
2.1 The Laws 13

down. Even though this is easily shown to be false, Aristotle was so right about so many
other things, his word was accepted as the truth for almost one thousand years until Galileo
showed that the old master was wrong about this topic.
The first law can be understood to be a conservation law. In this case, it actually states
the conservation of linear momentum. Linear momentum is given by,

p = mv .

Since the first law sets dv

dt
= 0, when there is no net force acting on the object, we can see
that,

dp dv
=m ,
dt dt
= 0,

which means that momentum is conserved.

2.1.2 The Second Law of Motion

The rate of change of momentum of a object is directly proportional to the force
applied, and takes place in the direction of the force.

dp
F= ,
dt
d(mv)
= ,
dt
dv
=m ,
dt
F = ma

Newton realised that only when there is a net force does an object alter its state of
motion. If we set F = 0 in the second law, we recover the first law. If F is non zero,
momentum is no longer conserved.
What if we had two reference frames, one stationary and one moving with a constant
relative velocity, vrel . If a force was acting on a object, would these two reference frames
agree on their calculation for the size of the force?
Lets call the velocity of the object v in the stationary reference frame, and vÕ in the
moving reference frame. Clearly we will have to have that v = vÕ + vrel . Now we let F be
14 Newton’s Laws of Motion

the force in the stationary frame, and FÕ be the force in the moving frame. Does F = FÕ ?

dv
F=m ,
dt
d(vÕ + vrel )
=m ,
A dt B
d(vÕ + vrel )
=m ,
dt
A B
dvÕ dvrel
=m + ,
dt dt
dvÕ
=m ,
dt
= FÕ ,

where we have used that vrel is constant, so that its derivative with respect to time is zero.
So the forces in inertial frames will always agree.
What about non-inertial frames? So in this case, one frame is not just moving with a
relative velocity vrel , but also is accelerating with a relative acceleration arel . In this case,
vÕ = v + arel t . This time we find,
A B
dvÕ
F=m + arel ,
dt
= FÕ + Ffictitious .

In this case, the non-inertial frame appears to see an fake, fictitious force acting on the
object. This force doesn’t actually exist, but is just an artefact caused by the acceleration of
the reference frame itself, which distorts its measurements.
A classic example of this is what happens if you throw a ball while on a rotating platform.
Let’s ignore gravity. A person not on the rotating platform will see the ball move in a straight
line after it is thrown, since no forces are acting on it after it is thrown. However, a person
on the rotating platform will see the path of the ball appear to curve, as though a force were
acting on it. But really the path is not curving, the observer is curving as they are on a
rotating platform, which is causing them to accelerate.

2.1.3 The Third Law of Motion

All forces between two objects exist in pairs of equal magnitude and opposite
directions, one acting on one object and the other force acting on the other object.
2.2 Simple Dynamics Examples 15

If F12 is the force from object 1 on object 2, and F21 is the force from object 2 on object
1, then,

F12 = ≠F21 ,
dp1 dp2
=≠ .
dt dt

This is another form of the conservation of momentum, but now it says that momentum
is conserved among all the objects in a system. So even though for a single object its
momentum can change, overall the momentum of the whole system is conserved.

2.2 Simple Dynamics Examples

So now we can use Newton’s laws to solve simple systems. In nearly all cases the approach
to the problems is the same. We know from Newton’s second law that F = ma. We can
replace F with sum of all the forces acting on a body. This then gives us an equation for
that body, called the equation of motion, since it describes how the body will move and
accelerate.

2.2.1 Example: Box on a table

Suppose we have a box of mass m on a table on the Earth. What is the force of the table
on the box?
In this case, since the object is stationary, we know that the forces must be balanced to
give no net force. That comes from Newtons first law. How many forces are acting in the
system? Only two forces, gravity pulling the box down and a contact force from the table
pushing the box up, called the Normal force. These forces must be equal and opposite, but
not because of Newton’s third law. (What are the Newton’s third law force pairs here, if
they are not gravity and the contact force?) They have to balance, because otherwise the
box would move. So, if we can find out the size and direction of the gravitational force, the
force from the table will be equal and opposite.
What is the force of gravity on a object of mass m? We know from Newton’s second
law that F = ma. If there was no table, the box would accelerate with a acceleration of g,
which is the acceleration of gravity near the Earths surface, which has a magnitude value of
about 9.81 ms≠2 , directed straight down. So that means that the force from the table on
16 Newton’s Laws of Motion

the box must be F = ≠mg. The minus sign here is because it has to point in the opposite
direction to g.

2.2.2 Example: Two boxes

Fig. 2.1

Consider the case of two boxes side by side. The only external force on the system is
the force F as shown in the figure above. However, due to Newton’s third law, we know
that there will be internal forces also. m1 will exert a force on m2 , and m2 on m1 . These
internal forces will have the same magnitude, act in opposite directions and each will act on
a different box.
Suppose |F| = 20 N, m1 = 4 kg m2 = 16 kg. In that case, what will be the acceleration
of the two boxes?

F = (m1 + m2 )a ,
F
a= ,
(m1 + m2 )
= 1 ms≠2 .

We can also find the magnitudes of the internal forces. Let F12 be the force of m1 on
m2 and F21 be the force of m2 on m1 . Then,

F12 = m2 a ,
= 16 N .
2.2 Simple Dynamics Examples 17

m1 has two forces acting on it, both the external force F and the internal force F21 . So,

F ≠ F21 = m1 a ,
20 N ≠ F21 = m1 a ,
F21 = 16 N .

Note how the magnitudes of F12 and F21 are the same, just as Newton’s third law told us.
The directions of the forces will be in opposite directions, and they act on different bodies.

2.2.3 Example: Tension

Tension is a force usual exerted by a string or a cable. If we assume we have a massless and
inextensible string, then the tension will be constant throughout the string. This is called an
ideal string, and we usually assume our strings are ideal in most physics cases.

Fig. 2.2

Suppose we have a mass suspended from the ceiling by two ideal strings. In this case we
q
have no acceleration, so we know that i Fi = 0, as shown in the figure. Suppose we have
a mass of m = 1 kg. The angles of the two strings are ◊1 = fi/3 and ◊2 = fi/4. In this
case we can find the values of the two tensions. Taking the x direction as horizontal and y
as vertical, we can see that the forces in the two directions have to balance. So

x : T2 sin ◊2 ≠ T1 sin ◊1 = 0 ,
y : T2 cos ◊2 + T1 cos ◊1 ≠ mg = 0 .
18 Newton’s Laws of Motion

Plugging in the values of the angles, we find that,

Û
2
x : T1 = T2 .
3

We can use this value in the y equation to get,

Û
21 1
T2 + T2 Ô ≠ 9.8 = 0 .
32 2

We can now solve this to find that,

T1 = 7.2 N ,
T2 = 8.8 N .

2.2.4 Example: Massless Pulley

Suppose we have an ideal string hung over a massless pulley with no slipping. Two masses are
suspended from the string, as in the figure. Since the string is ideal, we know that T1 = T2
which we will now just call T.
We can write 1 dimensional equations of motion for each of the masses. We can find
that,

T ≠ m1 g = m1 a ,
T ≠ m2 g = ≠m2 a .

Rearranging we find that,

T = m1 (a + g) ,
m1 (a + g) ≠ m2 g = ≠m2 a ,
3 4
m2 ≠ m1
)a= g,
m1 + m2
3 4
2m2 m1
T = g.
m1 + m2

2.2.5 Example: Tension and Circular Motion

Suppose we have a mass undergoing circular motion in a vertical plane near the surface of
the Earth.
2.2 Simple Dynamics Examples 19

Fig. 2.3

In this case there are only two forces acting on the mass, gravity and the tension. Since
for circular motion you have to have a constant centripetal acceleration, the tension in the
string must be constantly changing, since the gravitational force is sometimes away from the
centre (at the bottom of the motion) and sometimes towards the centre (at the top of the
motion).
The equation of motion of the mass will be given by,

T + mg = ma ,
20 Newton’s Laws of Motion

Fig. 2.4

where we know that the acceleration must be equal to the centripetal acceleration of circular
motion. We can rearrange for T to see that,

T = m (a ≠ g) ,

which varies in time since the direction of a changes in time.

2.3 Friction
We saw in the last section that when a box is sitting on a table, there are two forces acting
on the box. The gravitational force downwards and the normal force upwards. What happens
if we have a box sitting on a sloped surface? In this case the table will exert two forces.
The normal force is still there as before, and always acts perpendicular to the surface. There
is also a frictional force which acts in the opposite direction to the motion it is trying to
prevent.
The frictional force for any surface is proportional to the normal force,

|Fµ | = µ|N| ,

where Fµ is the frictional force, N is the normal force, and µ is the constant of proportionality
between the two, called the coefficient of friction. It varies for different materials. Another
complexity is that the coefficient of friction for a moving body is actually lower than the
coefficient of friction for a stationary body.
2.3 Friction 21

Fig. 2.5

The coefficient of static friction is denoted µs . The coefficient of dynamic friction, that
is for moving objects, is denoted µd . It is always the case that µs > µd .
If our body is moving down the slope with velocity v,

Fµ = ≠µd |N|v̂ ,

which shows that the frictional forces acts in the opposite direction to the motion. The v̂
means a unit vector in the direction of v.
Frictional forces obey certain rules.

1. The force is proportional to the Normal force N.

2. The force does not depend on the contact area.

3. The force does not depend of the velocity of the object.

We can examine the case of the box sliding down a slope. In this case we already know
that,

Fµ = ≠µd |N|v̂ ,
|N| = mg cos ◊ .
22 Newton’s Laws of Motion

We can combine this to get,

Fµ = ≠µd mg cos ◊x̂ .

Looking just at the forces, we can see that the equation of motion will be,

Fµ + mg + N = ma .

We can decompose this equation into the x and y directions to get that,

mg sin ◊ ≠ µd mg cos ◊ = max ,

N ≠ mg cos ◊ = 0 .

We can find the coefficient of static friction by finding the largest angle of the slope that
still keeps the object stationary. At the point where the object just begins to move, we know
that the static frictional force µs mg cos ◊ is almost exactly equal to the x component of the
weight, that is mg sin ◊. This means that µs = tan ◊.

2.4 Drag
Drag forces differ from frictional forces in that they depend on the shape of the object,
its velocity and the medium it is moving through. Very generally drag forces have two
components,

Fdrag = ≠(k1 v + k2 v 2 ) v̂ ,

where v is the modulus of the velocity, v. The hat denotes a unit vector. Here the constant
k1 is a viscosity dependent constant, related to the medium being moved through. k2 is a
aerodynamic constant, related to the shape of the object. At low speeds the viscous term
will dominate, while at high speeds, the aerodynamic drag term will dominate.
Viscosity is a force which depends on the speed of the object. If we drop an object
when there is no viscosity, there will be constant gravitational acceleration. However, with
viscosity, the acceleration is no longer constant, and as the velocity of the object increases, so
does the viscous force. At some point the gravitational force, mg will equal the viscous force
≠k1 v, and there will no longer be any acceleration. This is called terminal velocity. For most
2.4 Drag 23

common liquids this terminal velocity is quite small, so we can often ignore the aerodynamic
drag in these cases and just look at the viscous forces, since these forces dominate.
However, if we tried to just look at viscous forces to find the terminal velocity of a
sphere in air, we get a very large answer: vterminal ¥ 11000000 ms≠1 . However, we know
experimentally that the terminal velocity in air is much smaller than this. This is a case
where the aerodynamic drag forces dominate, and we can no longer ignore those effects.
The actual value of the terminal velocity for a sphere is around 70 ms≠1 .

2.4.1 Example: Horizontal Motion with Linear Drag.

In this example we will assume that there is no friction and no rolling. We have a sphere
moving horizontally in some viscous medium. For a sphere, the viscous force takes the
following form,

Fviscous = ≠C1 rv v̂ ,

where C1 is some constant depending on the viscosity of the medium and r is the radius of
the sphere.
r = 5 mm in this case. The mass of the sphere is m = 4 gr. The medium has a viscosity
constant of C1 = 1.6 ◊ 102 kg m≠1 s≠1 . The initial position is x0 , and initial velocity is v0 .
Find the equation of motion for the system, and find the time it takes for the velocity to
drop by 1/e ( 34%) of its initial value.

We know that the only horizontal force acting on the sphere will be the viscous force, so
≠Fviscous = ma. This means that the equation of motion for the system will be,

mẍ + C1 rẋ = 0 ,
C1 r
ẍ + ẋ = 0.
m

Note, we have used ẍ for acceleration, and ẋ for the velocity. The dots represent how many
derivatives with respect to time we are applying. Velocity is the first derivative of distance
x with respect to time, and acceleration is the second derivative with respect to time of
distance x.
We can solve this first order differential equation with the following ansatz,

x(t) = a ≠ be≠t/· ,
24 Newton’s Laws of Motion

where we have defined,

m
·© .
C1 r

We can find the value of the unknown constants, a and b by finding first

x(t) = a ≠ be≠t/· ,
b
ẋ(t) = e≠t/· ,
·
b
ẍ(t) = ≠ 2 e≠t/· ,
·

and taking these and applying the initial conditions. This gives us that,

b = v0 · ,
a = x0 + b .

With these it is left as an exercise for you to find the expression of the velocity and the time
it takes to reduces by 1/e. The final answer you should find is that · = 5 ms.