Newton’s First Law of MotionSir Isaac Newton was in my mind one of the greatest people who everlived. He was born in 1642 and died in 1727. He formulated three laws ofmotion that help explain some very important principles of physics. Some ofNewton’s laws could only be proved under certain conditions; actual observationsand experiments made sure that they are true. Newton’s laws tell us how objectsmove by describing the relationship between force and motion.
I am going to tryto explain his first law in more simple terms. Newton’s first law of motion states: A body continues in its state ofrest or uniform motion unless an unbalanced force acts on it. When a body is atrest or in uniform motion this is called inertia. Let’s say that someone parksa car on a flat road and forgets to put the vehicle into park. The car shouldstay in that spot.
This state of being is called inertia. All of a sudden thewind picks up or some kid crashes into the car with a bike. Both the wind andthe kid’s bike crashing into the bike are unbalanced forces. The car shouldstart to move.
The car might accelerate to two miles per hour. Now we wouldall assume that the car would come to a stop sometime. We assume this becauseit is true. It is true because there is friction between the tires and the road. The car now has inertia in uniform motion.
Since there is friction, the carcannot keep moving forever because friction is an unbalanced force acting uponthe tires. What if there was not any friction? The car would keep going forever. That is if there was not any wind or a hill or any unbalanced force acting uponthe car. This is rather weird just to think about. Because this usually wouldnot happen in our customary world today.
You just would not see a car go onforever. An easy experiment to demonstrate this law is to take a glass jar andput an index or a heavier than paper card over the top of the glass jar. Next,place a coin on the index card. Be sure that the index card is strong enough tosupport the penny without bending itself. Now place your finger about threecentimeters away from the card and flick the card out from underneath the coin. The coin should fall into the glass jar.
The inertia of the coin keeps it inplace even when the card is moving underneath it.Science
