NEWTON LAWS OF MOTION TRAJECTORY.

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NEWTON LAWS OF MOTION

Investigating various kinds of motion in practice, we discover that in inértial
reference frames any acceleration of a body is caused by some other bodies
acting on it. The degree of influence (action) of each of the surrounding
bodies on the state of motion of the body A in question is a problem whose
solution in a concrete case can be obtained through experiment.
experiment.

The influence of another body (or bodies) causing the acceleration of the
body A is referred to as a force. Therefore, a body accelerates due to a force
acting on it.
One of the most significant features of a force is its material origin. When
speaking of a force, we always implicitly assume that in the absence of
extraneous bodies the force acting on the body in question s equal to zero. If
it becomes evident that a force is present, we try to identify its origin as one
or another concrete body
bod or bodies.
All the forces which are treated in mechanics are usually subdivided into the
forces emerging due to the direct contact between bodies (forces of pressure,
friction) and the forces arising due to the fields generated by interacting
bodies (gravitational
avitational and electromagnetic forces). We should point out,
however, that such a classification of forces is conditional: the interacting
forces in a direct contact are essentially produced by some kind of field
generated by molecules and atoms of bodies
bodies.. Consequently, in the final
analysis all forces of interaction between bodies are caused by fields. The
analysis of the nature of interaction forces lies outside the scope of
mechanics and is considered in other divisions of physics.

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Mass. Experience shows that everybody “resists” any effort to change its
velocity, both in magnitude and direction. This property expressing the
degree of unsusceptibility of a body to any change in its velocity is called
inertness. Different bodies reveal this property in different degrees. A
measure of inertness is provided by the quantity called mass. A body
possessing a greater mass is more inert, and vice versa.
Let us introduce the notion of mass m by defining the ratio of masses of two
different bodies via the inverse ratio of accelerations imparted to them by
equal forces:

Note that this definition does not require any preliminary measurements of
the forces. It is sufficient to meet the criterion of equality of forces. For
example, if two different bodies lying on a smooth horizontal surface are
pulled in succession by the same spring oriented horizontally and stretched
to the same length, the influence of the spring on the bodies is equal in both
cases, i.e. the force is identical in both eases.
consequently, a comparison of the masses of two bodies experiencing the
action of the same force reduces to the comparison of accelerations of these
bodies. Having adopted a certain body for a mass standard, we may compare
the mass of any body against the standard.
Experience shows that in terms of Newtonian mechanics a mass determined
that way possesses the following two important properties:
(t) mass is an additive quantity, i.e. the mass of a composite body is equal to
the sum of the masses of its constituents;
(2) the mass of a body proper is a constànt quantity remaining invariable in
the process of motion. –

Force. Let us get back to the experiment in which we compared the

accelerations of two different bodies subjected to the action of an equally
stretched spring. The fact that the spring was stretched equally in both cases
permitted us to claim an identical force exerted by the spring.
On the other band, a force makes a body accelerate. The accelerations of
different bodies under the action of the same equally stretched spring are
different. Our task is to define a force in such a way as to make it the same
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despite the difference in accelerations of different bodies in the case
considered.
To do this, we have to clear up the following thing first:
what quantity is the same in this experiment? The answer is obvious: it is the
product ma. It is then natural to adopt this quantity for a definition of force.
Besides, taking into account that acceleration is a vectorial quantity, we shall
also assume a force to be a vector coinciding in its direction- with the
acceleration vector a.
Thus, in Newtonian mechanics a force acting on a body of mass m is defined
as a product ma. Apart from the maximum simplicity and convenience, this
definition of a force is of course justified only by the subsequent analysis of
all consequences following from it.

Newton’s second law. Examining in practice the interaction of various

mass points with surrounding bodies, we observe that ma depends on the
quantities characterizing both the state of the mass point itself and the state
of surrounding bodies.
This significant physical fact underlies one of the most fundamental
generalizations of Newtonian mechanics, Newton’s second law:
the product of the mass of a mass point by its acceleration is a function of
the position of this point relative to surrounding bodies, and sometimes a
function of its velocity as well. This function is denoted by F and is called a
force.
This is exactly what constitutes the actual content of Newton’s second law,
which is usually formulated in a brief form as follows:
the product of the mass of a mass point by its acceleration is equal to the
force acting on it, i.e.
ma=F (1)
This equation is referred to as the motion equation of a mass point.
It should be immediately emphasized that Newton’s second law and Eq. (1)
acquire specific meaning only after the function F is established, that is, its
dependence on the quantities involved, or the law of force, is known.
Determining the law of force in each specific case is one of the basic
problems of physical mechanics.

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The definition of a force as ma has the remarkable merit of presenting the
laws of force in a very simple form. The study of motions at relativistic
velocities, however, showed that the laws of force should be modified to
make the forces dependent on the velocity of a mass point in an intricate
way. The theory would thus turn out to be cumbersome and confusing.
However, there is an easy way to dispose of the problem; the definition of a
force should be slightly modified as follows: a force is a derivative of the
momentum p of a mass point with respect to time, that is, dp/dt; Eq. (1)
should then be rewritten as dp/dt = F.
In Newtonian mechanics this definition of a force is identical to ma since
p= mv, m = const and dp/dt =ma, while in relativistic mechanics, as we shall
see, momentum depends on the velocity of a mass point in a more
complicated way. But something different is important here. When force is
defined as dp/dt, the laws of forces prove to remain the same in the
relativistic case as well. Thus, the simple expression of a given force via the
physical surrounding should not be changed on transition to relativistic
mechanics. This fact will be employed later.
On summation of forces. Under the given specific conditions any mass
point experiences, strictly speaking, only one force F whose magnitude and
direction are specified by the position of that point relative to all surrounding
bodies, and sometimes by its velocity as well. And still very often it is
convenient to depict this force F as a cumulative action of individual bodies,
or a sum of the forces F1, F2, . . .. Experience shows that if the bodies acting
as sources of force exert no influence on each other and so do not change
their state in the presence of other bodies, then

where ‫ܨ‬௜ is the force which the ith body exerts on the given mass point in the
absence of other bodies.
If that is the case, the forces ‫ܨ‬ଵ , ‫ܨ‬ଶ ,. . . are said to obey the principle of
superposition. This statement should be regarded as a generalization of
experimental data.

Newton’s third law. In all experiments involving only two bodies A and
B body A imparting acceleration to B, it turns out that B imparts acceleration
to A. Hence, we come to the conclusion that the action of bodies on one

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another is of an interactive nature.
Newton postulated the following general property of all interaction forces,
Newton’s third Law:
two mass points act on each other with forces which are always equal in
magnitude and oppositely directed along a straight line connecting these
points, i.e.
(2)
This implies that interaction forces always appear in pairs. The two forces
are applied to different mass points; besides, they are the forces of the same
nature.
The law (2) holds true for systems comprising any number of mass points.
We proceed from the assumption that
in this case as well the interaction reduces to the forces of paired interaction
between mass points.
In Newton’s third law both forces are assumed to be equal in magnitude at
any moment of time regardless of the motion of the points. This statement
corresponds to the Newtonian idea about the instantaneous propagation of
interactions, an assumption which is identified in classical mechanics as the
principle of long-range action. In accordance with this principle the
interaction between bodies propagates in space at an infinite velocity. In
other words, having changed t1e position (state) of one body, we can
immediately detect at least a slight variation in the other bodies interacting
with it, however far they may be located.
Now we know that this is actually not the case: there does exist a finite
maximum velocity of interaction propagation, being equal to the velocity of
light in vacuo. Accordingly, Newton’s third law (as well as the second one)
is valid only within certain bounds. However, in classical mechanics,
treating bodies moving with velocities substantially lower than the velocity
of light, both laws hold true with a very high accuracy. This is evidenced, for
example, by orbits of planets and artificial satellites computed with an
“astronomical” accuracy by the use of Newton’s laws.
Newton’s laws are the fundamental laws of classical mechanics. They maké
it possible, at least in principle, to solve any mechanical problem. Besides,
all the other laws of classical mechanics can be derived from• Newton’s
laws.
In accordance with the Galilean principle of relativity the laws of mechanics
are identical throughout all inertial reference frames. This means,

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specifically, that Eq. (1) will have the same form in. any inertial reference
frame. In fact, the mass in of a mass point per se does not depend on
velocity, i.e. is the same in all reference frames. Moreover, In all inertial
reference frames the acceleration a of a point is also identical. The force F is
also independent of the Choice of a reference frame since it is determined
only by the position and velocity of a mass point relative to surrounding
bodies, and in accordance with non-relativistic kinematics these quantities
are equal in different inertial reference frames.

Thus, the three quantities m, w and r appearing in Eq. (1) do not change on
transition from one inertial reference frame to another, and therefore Eq. (1)
does not change either. In other words, the equation ma = F is invariant with
respect to the Galilean transformation

Applications of Newton Laws of Motion

(1) A mass M is hung with a light inextensible string as shown in the figure.
Find the tension of horizontal string.

(2)

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(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

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(7)

(8)

(9)

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