Physics Of Moving A Car

When your car is moving, it will keep moving until something stops it. i.e. your brakes or friction with the road/axles. When your car is stopped, it will remain stopped until something moves it, i.e. the the gas pedal. So imagine what you'r car would do if you just let go of the wheel and gas. (and imagine it without friction, so on some ice or somrhting). If you're travelling in a straight line, you keep moving along. But if you're in the middle of a curve and let go of the wheel, you careen off on a tangent. Right? First understand that acceleration means a change in velocity (think speeding up or slowing down). Now, keep the car metaphor in mind. if you hold the gas pedal down (the accelerator) this applies a force to move your car. If you hold the accelerator in the same place, your car doesn't go at a constant speed, it will continue to speed up until you let off a bit on the …show more content…
(This is ignoring hills, friction with the road, etc.) This is because when you apply a force, it accelerates an object. How much it accelerates it depends on its mass because heavier objects are harder to move. to summarize, how fast an object is speeding up (acceleration) EQUALS how hard you are pushing the object (force) DIVIDED by how heavy the object is (mass) a=f/m and then Newton rearranged it to be prettier/easier to work with/ger rid of fractions to look like f=ma. The car metaphor would be a little confusing for this one, so I'll abandon it. Consider the recoil of a gun. When the firing pin hits the bullet, a small explosion goes off. This explosion puts force out in every 3D direction, but the barrel of the gun focuses that energy into two opposite directions - down the barrel/out of the gun, and through the back of the gun/into your body. Now remember law