In my most recent journey through physics, I learned about forces. There are six specific kinds of forces: Applied, normal, friction, tensional, air resistance, and gravitational force. I learned how to summarize the forces acting on an object in a free-body-diagram. You can use these diagrams to solve for the sum of the forces in the X or Y axis. Also, I know Newton's Laws of Motion, which further define the actions of said forces.
The first law states that an object at rest and an object in motion will most likely stay at rest and stay in motion, respectively. These objects will also maintain the same speed and direction until an unbalanced force acts upon them. For example, a cat falling from a building that has reached terminal velocity will most likely continue falling at said velocity until it is stopped and caught by a fireman.
The second law states that the acceleration of an object is identical to the net force of the object and inversely identical to the mass of said object. In other words, the heavier an object is, the faster it will accelerate. Imagine a pebble and a boulder being rolled down the same incline plane. The boulder will accelerate faster than the pebble, because it has a larger mass.
Finally, the third law states that when one object acts with a force upon another object, there will be an equal but opposite reaction force from the second object onto the first. One example of this is when a person slams their toe into a door (I just did so a few minutes ago!). The action of the toe slamming into the door receives the reaction force of the door slamming into the toe - by human definition, this reaction is called PAIN.
In addition, I now know how to use the equation Fg = mg to solve for an object's mass and weight. I just need to substitute the provided information into the equation and solve for the missing quantity.
I didn't find too many problems with this section; As a matter of fact, this has been my favorite unit so far! The only difficulty I found was when I tried to write a net force equation for a pulley system. I couldn't understand why only certain forces were included in the equation. I fixed this problem when I highlighted the direction of motion along my FBDs. By following this highlighted path, I was able to identify the forces I need in my net force equation. I also figured out that the forces that went along with the direction of motion were positive, and contradicting forces were negative. This method of highlighting made it much easier to write net force equations!
