Force & Translational Dynamics

Essential Questions

• Why do we feel pulled toward Earth but not toward a pencil?

• Why is it more difficult to stop a fully loaded dump truck than a small passenger car?

• Why is it difficult to walk on ice?

• Why will a delivery truck filled with birds sitting on its floor be the same weight as a truck with the same birds flying around inside?

Learning Objectives

Systems and Center of Mass

• Describe the properties and interactions of a system.

• Describe the location of a system’s center of mass with respect to the system’s constituent parts.

Forces and Free Body Diagrams

• Describe a force as an interaction between two objects or systems.

• Describe the forces exerted on an object or system using a free-body diagram.

Newton’s Third Law

• Describe the interaction of two objects using Newton’s third law and a representation of paired forces exerted on each object.

Newton’s First Law

• Describe the conditions under which a system’s velocity remains constant.

Newton’s Second Law

• Describe the conditions under which a system’s velocity changes.

Gravitational Force

• Describe the gravitational interaction between two objects or systems with mass.

• Describe situations in which the gravitational force can be considered constant.

• Describe the conditions under which the magnitude of a system’s apparent weight is different from the magnitude of the gravitational force exerted on that system.

• Describe inertial and gravitational mass.

Kinetic and Static Friction

• Describe kinetic friction between two surfaces.

• Describe static friction between two surfaces.

Spring Forces

• Describe the force exerted on an object by an ideal spring.

Circular Motion

• Describe the motion of an object traveling in a circular path.

• Describe circular orbits using Kepler’s third law.

Printable Learning Targets