So, from what I understand, Newton’s third law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
I’m having a very hard time wrapping my head around it, as it seems as though if his law worked the way I interprete it to, pushing an object or denting an object would be impossible.
For example,
If someone were to push a book on a table, the force they applied on the book to push it, should be countered by an equal and opposite reaction force, therefore not allowing them to move the book.
In another example, if someone were to push a piece of metal, there should be an equal and opposite reaction force (normal contact force?) which would not allow the person to move the metal (can’t dent it), no matter how much force they use.
I guess what I would like to know would be why this is not the case in the two above examples, and what is it that I am not interpreting correctly with Newton’s third law.
Thank you!!
In: Physics
The way I finally got my head around the third law was this:
Imagine you are sitting on a boat in a lake and you push another boat. If the boats are the same mass then both of them will start drifting apart at the same acceleration since an equal and opposite force was applied (a=f/m).
However if this boat you were pushing against was much larger than the one you were on you would both experience a larger acceleration away from the big boat since it is more massive. The same force is applied but one party has a much lower mass so is affected more.
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