is there anyone who has a problem with newtons 3rd law????

Question

it says "each action has an equal and opposite reaction" so...if a truck and a cycle collide....will the force exerted by the truck on the cycle be equal to the force exerted by the cycle on the truck?

thnx 4 those answers ppl!
but plz xplain...f=ma,
so by virtue of its mass the truck will exert a force much greater than tht of the cycle!
does this make sense???

Answer 1

I have no problem with Newton's third law.
Yes, both of these two forces will be equal. (But of course, the damages caused to them will be different, although that wasn't your question).

Answer 2

The truck will exert a force on the motorcycle. By 3rd law, motorcycle will also exert same amount of force on truck.

The reason the cycle seems to be pushed farther is because of the 2nd law: F=ma. Cycle has small mass, so it has a large acceleration. Since truck is large, the same force will not cause a very big (barely noticeable) acceleration.

Finally, the force will not necessarily force the truck (or motorcycle if the speeds are not large enough) to go the other direction, but will slow down the vehicle a bit.

Answer 3

When the truck collides with XN of force, the bike pushes back with XN of force. However, even though the forces exerted are equal, they do not necessary have the same result. The truck, weighting in at say 5000kg, means that it would then have a accelration towards the direction in which the bike pushes back of X/5000, where as the bike (100kg) would have a acceleration towards the direction that the truck was travelling of X/100. If X is relatively large (say 10,000), then the truck would have a reverse acceleration of 2ms-2, while the bike a mighty 100ms-2. Now unless the bike was travelling with a constant acceleration of 100.1ms-2 (or more decimals), it's goning to be slammed back.

Answer 4

Yes the force applied to the truck by the bicycle is equal to the force applied to the bicycle by the truck.

F1 = m1*a1=m2*a2=F2

F1 is the force applied by the truck to the bicycle
m1 is the mass of the bicycle
a1 is the acceleration of the bicycle
F2 is the force applied by the bicycle to the truck
m2 is the mass of the truck
a2 is the acceleration of the truck

So you are wondering how can F1 = F2 when a1 is clearly greater then a2.
The answer is that m1 is less then m2 by just the right amount to balance it out.
It takes a lot of force to accelerate a large mass.
when you place a lot of force on a small mass, you get a large acceleration.

Try pushing on a wall. The harder you push, the harder the wall pushes back.

Newton's third starts making more sense the longer you think about it.

Answer 5

the force between the truck and the cycle are equal. However the force between the truck and the ground (there is a force here otherwise everything would go through the ground) is greater than the force between the cycle and the ground due to the truck's mass being greater.

Answer 6

Dam, some of these folks take a theory question personally! I suspect the answer lies with newton's law about an object in motion tends to STAY in motion unless acted on by an outside force. In this case, the outside force of the bicycle is nowhere near enough to counteract the object's momentum/inertia. The truck in motion WILL be effected, but the disparity in weight of the 2 objects means the truck will barely notice a thing.
Layman's terms trivia: When an object's speed doubles, it's inertia quadruples. An object the size of a dime, traveling at orbital velocity, will have the same force as a bus traveling at 60mph.

Answer 7

hey u have messed things up dont u live in the real world im 16 i undestood that newtons 3rd law has no falt.
its cos this,
if u take a rock 10 kg heavy and a rock 8 kg heavy it will take mo force fo u to push the 10kg thin than the 8 kg thin.
here u will c that the cycle is weight less compared to the truck.

so even the force with wich the truck pushes the bycile, is exerted by the bycicle on the truck there will be no effect.i hope u understand me.
and pls dont insult ma favorite scientist.

"if not fo him we will be flotin in the air"(no gravity)haha

Answer 8

With the mass of the truck being so much greater than the bike, if you were in the truck you wouldn't notice much if anything from the bike hitting you. But it does affect you slightly. If two things of same mass and speed collide they should stop basically. But with one having more mass in just slows down some. Like a train hitting a car it would say cause the train to drop from 60mph to 50 mph but it wouldn't stop it.

Answer 9

i agree with u that the bicycle will not have a visibley equal effect on the truck ,but force is the product of mass and velocity , so since the mass of the truck is much larger than the truck the force exerted by the bicycle will be much less and canceeleed ou tby force of the truck .
so even if plainly things are not in concordance the maths tells us that it is >

Answer 10

Frnd it should be think on the basis of law momentum in which you will she that force exerted by the truck is max-m than the cyclist.

Answer 11

let's say the truck weighs 1,000kg & is travelling at 200m/sec, the bycycle weighs 20kg & is travelling at 10m/sec.

the truck's force is therefore 200,000N (newtons) & the bike's is 200N, so at the moment of impact the truck's force is reduced to 199,800N necessitating the driver to push down the accelerator a little to bring the truck up to speed again.

The truck still has a weight of 1,000kg, but it's speed is now only 199.8m/sec... Actually, assuming that the bycycle is smeared accross the front of the truck, the truck/bike weighs 1,020kg & is travelling at 199.58m/sec