Republic of the Philippines
Mountain Province State Polytechnic College
Bontoc, Mountain Province
KINETICS OF DYNAMICS
Module 2 of 8 Modules
General Physics
Elsa B. Daguio
CP #: 09074186867
Messenger account: Herzelle Bag-ay Daguio
Engineering Department
First Semester, School Year 2022-2023
INTRODUCTION
Kinetics is the study of the relations between unbalance forces and the
resulting changes in motion. In this module we will study the kinetics of particles with
topics requiring the combination of knowledge on the properties of forces and the
kinematics of particles previously covered in the previous module.
The lessons here are Friction and Newton’s laws of motion. The activities here
are designed for all students, regardless of gender and cultural background. The
number of hours allotted for this module shall be 16 hours.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of the module, you should be able to:
1. determine the normal force acting on an object applying Newton’s laws of
motion;
2. calculate the net force acting on an object applying Newton’s laws of
motion;
3. compute the friction force on an object using the given formulas; and
4. calculate the acceleration of an object in horizontal and inclined motion
applying Newton’s laws of motion.
PRETEST
Let see if you are knowledgeable with friction and Newton’s laws of motion. Take
time to answer the following questions by encircling the letter of your answer before
proceeding to the given lessons.
1. What will happen to the speed of a ball that is rolled up an inclined plane?
a. Speed of the ball will decrease.
b. Speed of the ball will increase.
c. Speed of the ball will remain constant.
2. If you and your friend exert equal forces on a ball, what happens to the ball’s
motion?
a. Motion of the ball will be towards you.
b. Motion of the ball will be towards your friend.
c. The ball will not move at all.
3. If you increase the force you apply to an object, what will happen to its
acceleration?
a. The object’s acceleration will decrease.
b. The object’s acceleration will also increase.
c. The object’s acceleration will remain constant.
4. Which of the following surfaces make you slide easier?
a. Rough wooden floor
b. Waxed wooden floor
c. Concrete floor
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5. If you pushed a massive box along a horizontal floor and it doesn’t move, what
could be the possible reason?
a. Your applied force is lesser than the mass of the box.
b. Your applied force is greater than the mass of the box.
c. Your applied force is equivalent to the mass of the box.
6. If you pushed a massive box along a horizontal surface and it just move, what
could be the possible reason?
a. Your applied force is lesser than the mass of the box.
b. Your applied force is greater than the mass of the box.
c. Your applied force is equivalent to the mass of the box.
7. What is the weight of Lily in newtons who has a mass of 40 kg?
a. 392
b. 402
c. 412
8. When you compress a sponge, which quantity changes?
a. Mass
b. Inertia
c. Volume
9. What causes motion of objects?
a. Force
b. Mass
c. Inertia
10. When a hammer exerts a force on a nail, how does the amount of force with that
of the nail on the hammer?
a. Greater
b. Lesser
c. Equal
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LESSON 1: NEWTON’S LAWS OF MOTION AND FRICTION
Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
1. calculate the net force acting on objects in motion;
2. determine the acceleration of objects in motion applying Newton’s Laws of
Motion; and
3. compute the roughness coefficient between an object and the surface.
LET’S ENGAGE
Do boulders move without cause?
If you saw a boulder (very large stone) in the middle of a flat field suddenly
begin to move across the ground, you’d look for the cause of motion. You might look to
see if someone was pulling the boulder with a rope or pushing it with a stick. You
would reason that something was causing it to move. We don’t believe that motion
occurs without cause. In general, we say the cause of the boulder’s motion is a force of
some kind. We know that something forces the boulder to begin moving.
LET’S TALK ABOUT IT
The idea that a force causes motion goes back to the fourth century B.C., when
the Greeks were developing some of the ideas of science. Aristotle, the foremost Greek
scientist, studied motion and divided it into two types: natural motion and violent
motion.
Natural motion on Earth was thought to be either straight up or straight
down, such as a boulder falling toward the ground or a puff of smoke rising in the air.
Objects would seek their natural resting places: boulders on the ground and smoke
high in the air like the clouds. It was natural for heavy things to fall and for very light
things to rise. Violent motion, on the other hand, was imposed motion. It was the
result of forces that pushed or pulled. A cart moved because it was pulled by a horse;
a tug-of-war was won by pulling a rope; a ship was pushed by the push of the wind.
Objects in their natural resting places could not move by themselves; they had to be
pushed or pulled. Since most thinkers before the sixteenth century considered it
obvious that Earth must be in its natural resting place and assumed that a force large
enough to move it was unthinkable, it was clear that Earth did not move.
It was in this intellectual climate that the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus
(1473 – 1543) formulated his theory of the moving Earth. Copernicus reasoned that
the simplest way to interpret astronomical observations was to assume that Earth
(and other planets) moves around the sun. This idea was extremely controversial at
the time. People preferred to believe that Earth was at the center of the universe.
Copernicus worked on his ideas in secret to escape persecution. In the last days of his
life and at the urging of close friends, he sent his ideas to the printer. The first copy of
his work, De Revolutionibus, reached him on the day of his death, May 24, 1543.
Galileo, the foremost scientist of late-Renaissance Italy, was outspoken in his
support of Copernicus. As a result, he suffered a trial and house arrest. One of
Galileo’s great contributions to physics was demolishing the notion that a force is
necessary to keep an object moving. A force is any push or pull. Friction is the name
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given to the force that acts between materials that touch as they move past each other
as discussed in the previous lesson. If friction were absent, a moving object would
need no force whatever to remain in motion.
Galileo argued that only when friction is present needed to keep an object
moving. He tested his idea by rolling balls along plane surfaces tilted at different
angles. He noted that a ball rolling down such an inclined plane picks up speed as
shown in Figure 6.1. The ball is rolling partly in the direction of the pull of Earth’s
gravity. He also noted that a ball rolling up an inclined plane – in a direction opposed
by gravity – slows down. What about a ball rolling on a level surface? While rolling
level, the ball does not roll with or against gravity. Galileo found that a ball rolling on a
smooth horizontal plane has almost constant velocity. He stated that if friction were
entirely absent, a ball moving horizontally would move forever. No push or pull would
be required to keep it moving once it is set in motion.
(Hewitt, 2005)
Figure 6.1. (Left) When the ball rolls downward, it moves with Earth’s gravity and its
speed increases. (Center) When the ball rolls upward, it moves against gravity and loses
speed. (Right) When the ball rolls on a level plane, it does not move with ot against
gravity.
Galileo was concerned with how things move rather than why they move. He
showed that experiment,not logic, is the best test of knowledge. Galileo’s fidings about
motion and his concept of inertia discredited Aristotle’s theory of motion. The way was
opened for Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) to synthesize a new vision of the universe.
What is Newton’s First Law of Motion?
Newton’s first law of motion, usually called the Law of Inertia, states that
“Every object continues in a state of rest, or of motion in a straight line at constant
speed, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces exerted upon it”. Simply put,
things tend to keep on doing what they’re already doing. Dishes on a table top, for
example, are in a state of rest. They tend to remain at rest, as is evidenced if you snap
a tablecloth from beneath them. Try this at first with some unbreakable dishes. If you
do it properly, you’ll find the brief and small forces of friction are not significant
enough to appreciably move the dishes. Only a force will change that state.
Now consider an object in motion. If you slide a hockey puck along the surface
of a city street, the puck quite soon comes to rest. If you slide it along ice, it slides for
a longer distance. This is because the friction force is very small. If you slide it along
an air table where friction is practically absent, it slides with no apparent loss in
speed. We see that in the absence of forces, a moving object tends to move in a
straight line indefinitely. Toss an object from a space station located in a vacuum of
outer space, and the object will move forever. It will move by virtue of its own inertia.
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Mass – A Measure of Inertia
Kick an empty can and it moves. Kick a can filled with sand and it doesn’t move
as much. Kick a can filled with steel nails and you’ll hurt your foot. The nail – filled
can has move inertia than the sand – filled can, which in turn has more inertia than
the empty can. The amount of inertia an object has depends on its mass – which is
roughly the amount of material present in the object. The more mass an object has,
the greater its inertia and the more force it takes to change its state of motion.
Mass is Not a Volume
Do not confuse mass and volume. They are entirely different concepts. Volume
is a measure of space and is measured in units such as cubic centimeters, cubic
meters, liters. Mass is measured in kilograms. If an object has a large mass, it may or
may not have a large volume. For example, equal – sized bags of cotton and nails may
have equal volumes, but very unequal masses. How many kilograms of matter an
object contains and how much space the object occupies are two different things.
Mass is Not Weight
Mass is often confused with weight. We say a heavy object contains a lot of
matter. We often determine the amount of matter in an object by measuring its
gravitational attraction to Earth. However, mass is more fundamental than weight.
Mass is a measure of the amount of material in an object and depends only on the
number of and kind of atoms that compose it. Weight on the other hand is a measure
of the gravitational force acting on the object. Weight depends on the object’s location.
Mass is the quantity of matter in an object. More specifically, mass is a
measure of inertia that an object exhibits in response to any effort made to start it,
stop it, or otherwise change its state of motion. Weight is the force of gravity on an
object. While mass and weight are not the same, they are proportional to each other in
a given place. Objects with great mass have great weight; objects with little mass have
little weight.
What is Net Force?
Net force is the combination of all forces acting on an object. It is the net force
that changes an object’s state of motion. In the absence of force, objects at rest stay at
rest and objects in motion continue in motion. More specifically, in the absence of a
net force, objects do not change their state of motion. For example, if you push with
equal and opposite forces on opposite sides of an object at rest, it will remain at rest.
The forces cancel each other out and there is no net force (Figure 6.2, bottom). Figure
6.2 shows how forces combine to produce a net force. When you pull horizontally with
a force of 10 N on an object resting on a frictionless surface, the net force acting on
the object is 10 N. if a friend assists you and also pulls in the same direction with a
force of 5 N, then the net force is the sum of these forces, or 15 N (Figure 6.2, top). The
object moves as if it were pulled with a single 15 – N force. However, if your friend
pulls with a force of 5 N in the opposite direction, then the net force is the difference of
these forces, or 5 N (Figure 6.2, center). The resulting motion of the object is the same
as if it were pulled with a single 5 – N force.
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(Hewitt, 2005)
Figure 6.2: Net Force
Equilibrium – When Net Force Equals Zero
What forces act on your book while it is motionless on a table? Don’t say just its
weight. If only the force of gravity were acting on the book, it would be in free fall. The
fact that the book is at rest is evidence that another force must be acting on it. This
other force exactly balances the book’s weight and produces a net force of zero. The
other force is the support force of the table. Support force is often called the normal
force (as discussed in the previous lesson). As shown in Figure 6.3, the table pushes
up on the book with a force equal to the book’s weight. When an object is at rest, with
the net force on it being zero, we say the object is in a state of equilibrium. The
resting book is in equilibrium.
(Hewitt, 2005)
Figure 6.3: (Left) the table pushes up on the book with a force equal to the book’s weight.
(Right) The spring pushes up on your hand with the same force you use to push down on
the spring.
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Does the table really push up on the book? Yes, just as a spring pushes up on
your hand when you compress it. Look at Figure 6.3. You can feel the spring pushing
back on your hand. Similarly, a book lying on a table compresses the atoms in the
table. Behaving like microscopic springs, the atoms in contact with the book push
back on it. Since the book is in equilibrium, the net force on it must be zero.
What is Newton’s Second Law of Motion?
Newton’s Second Law states that “The acceleration produced by a net force on
an object is directly proportional to the magnitude of the net force, is in the same
direction as the net force, and is inversely proportional to the mass of the object”. Or, in
equation form,
Force Causes Acceleration
Consider an object at rest, such as a hockey puck on ice. Apply a force and it
starts to move. Since the puck was not moving before, it has accelerated – it has
changed its motion. When the hockey stick is no longer pushing it, the puck moves at
constant velocity. Apply another force by striking the puck again, and again the
motion changes. The puck accelerates – force causes acceleration.
Most often, the force we apply is not the only force acting on an object. Other
forces may act as well. Recall that the combination of all forces acting on an object is
the net force. Acceleration depends on the net force. To increase the acceleration of an
object, you must increase the net force acting on it. Double the force on an object and
its acceleration doubles.
Mass Resists Acceleration
Push on an empty shopping cart. Then push equally hard on a heavily loaded
shopping cart. The loaded shopping cart will accelerate much less than the empty
cart. This shows that acceleration depends on the mass being pushed. The same force
applied to twice as much mass results in only half the acceleration. For three times
the mass, one – third the acceleration results.
What is Newton’s Third Law of Motion?
Newton’s Third Law states that “Whenever one object exerts a force on a second
object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first object”. One
force is called the action force. The other force is called the reaction force. It doesn’t
matter which force we call action and which we call reaction. The important thing is
that they are partners in a single interaction and that neither force exists without the
other. They are equal in strength and opposite in direction. Newton’s third law is often
stated: “To every action there is always an equal opposing reaction.”
In every interaction, the forces always occur in pairs. For example, you interact
with the floor when you walk on it. You push against the floor, and the floor
simultaneously pushes against you. Likewise, the tires of a car interact with the road
to produce the car’s motion. The tires push against the road, and the road
simultaneously pushes back on the tires.
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What is Friction?
Friction is a force that opposes motion. When a force is applied to a body
resting on a rough plane so that the body moves or tends to move, a frictional force
acts on the body in opposition to the applied force as shown in Figure 6.4. The force
necessary to overcome friction depends on the nature of the materials in contact, their
roughness or smoothness, and the normal force, but not on the area of contact.
(Patel, 2016)
Figure 6.4. Friction force
Friction comes in two types; the static and the kinetic. An object has static
friction when a force is applied to it but it does not move (e.g. pushing a piano but no
motion). An object is experiencing a kinetic friction when it moves (e.g. pushing a
piano and it moves).
It is found experimentally that the force of friction is directly proportional to the
normal force. The constant of proportionality is called the coefficient of friction
(sometimes called as coefficient of roughness). When the contacting surfaces are
actually sliding one over the other, the force of friction is given by the equation
Where:
the friction force directed parallel to the surfaces and opposite to the
direction of motion;
the coefficient of friction (either static or kinetic); and
the normal force (see Figure 6.5) which is always perpendicular to the
contact surface.
𝐍𝒇
𝐖 𝐦𝐠
(Memorang, 2019)
Figure 6.5: Normal force
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Where:
mass of the object
gravitational acceleration
⁄
Examples:
1. A 30 kg brick is lying on a table, not moving. What is the normal force?
𝐖
𝐦 𝟑𝟎 𝐤𝐠
𝐍𝒇
Solution:
The brick is lying on a horizontal surface so the normal force is just equal to the
weight of the brick.
( )
2. If it takes 200 Newton to move a 100 kg box across a flat floor at constant speed,
what is the coefficient of friction?
𝐖
𝟐𝟎𝟎 𝐍 𝐦 𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝐤𝐠
𝒇
𝐍𝒇
Solution:
Constant speed means no acceleration, so the applied force is balancing
the friction force or a state of equilibrium exists, thus the applied force is equal to
the friction force and since the box is on a horizontal surface, normal force is
equal to the weight of the box.
( )
3. A 25 – kg box slides down a inclined plane with a roughness coefficient of
0.18.
a. What is the normal force?
b. What is the friction force?
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𝜇
θ
Solution:
a. Given: ,
Req’d: N
Resolve the weight of the box into vector components:
Normal force is equal to the summation of all forces perpendicular to plane
surface. Thus,
( )
b. Given: ,
Req’d: f
( )
4. A 50 – N force, inclined at as shown is pulling the 20 – kg block. The
coefficient of friction between the block and the plane is 0.2.
a. What is the friction force between the block and the plane?
b. What is the acceleration of the block?
𝜇
Solution:
a. Given: ,
Req’d: f
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Resolve the applied force into vector components:
𝑎
𝜇 𝑓
𝑓
From friction force equation, normal force is the combination of all forces
perpendicular to the plane surface. Since is opposite the direction of
W, then, will be subtracted from W. Thus,
( )
( )
b. Given: ,
Req’d:
Net force F is the summation of all forces parallel to the surface and these are
the frictional force f and the horizontal component of the applied force
. But since the frictional force f is opposite the direction of ,
then f will be subtracted from . Thus,
From Newton’s Second Law of Motion:
5. A 50 kg block rests on an inclined plane 20 with the horizontal as shown. The
coefficient of friction between the block and the plane is 0.15.
a. What is the net force acting on the block?
b. What is the acceleration of the block?
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Solution:
a. Given: ,
Req’d:
Resolve the weight of the block into vector components:
( ) [ ( )]
b. Given: ,
Req’d: a
From Newton’s Second Law of Motion:
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REFERENCES
Hewitt, P. G. (2005). Conceptual physics. Jurong, Singapore: Pearson Education South
Asia Pte Ltd.
Serway, R. A., & Faughn, J. S. (2nd ed.). (1989). College physics. New York, New York:
Sauders College Publishing.
Memorang (2019). Normal force. Retrieved from
[Link]
+Motion/
Patel, D. (2016). Friction force. Retrieved from [Link]
coefficient-of-static-friction-vary
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