Does Newtons 3rd law mean that half of the energy is wasted?

802 viewsOtherPhysics

This may sound dumb to some folks, but lets say I fire a gun. 1000N of force goes into the bullet, and another 1000N of force goes into my body. Even if i strap the gun to the ground, it will just apply 1000N of force to move the earth by a tiny amount. Because of this, does it mean that it isn’t possible to have 2000N of force going to the bullet with the same parameters as before?

In: Physics

17 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Newton’s third law says that all force is equal and opposite, and force is mass times acceleration. So the mass-times-acceleration applied to the bullet will be equal to the mass-times-acceleration applied to the gun/shooter.

Because the mass of the gun (plus shooter) is many many times more than the mass of the bullet, the acceleration to the bullet is much much greater than the acceleration to the gun. And so most of the energy (but admittedly not all) goes to the bullet.

You are viewing 1 out of 17 answers, click here to view all answers.