Key Terms and Concepts for Forces

to accompany chapter 12 Physical Science:Concepts in Action

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Terms:

Concepts:

  1. Newton's laws
    • 1st - inertia an object wants to keep doing what it is doing unless something acts upon it to change the forces
    • 2nd F= ma
    • 3rd action - reaction
  2. Force is a vector
    • having both magnitude and direction
    • total force is zero
  3. Tension
    • weighing of an object with a spring scale
  4. Frictional Forces
    • variable dependent on velocity and mass
    • this is the force that resists motion 
  5. Air friction
    • terminal velocity - the balanced forces btw air molecules and gravity
  6. Fictitious Forces
    • forces that you percieve but that dont really exist 
    • such as the reisitance to inertia when you feel pushed back in your car when you accelerate
    • or the force we call centrifugal force
  7. 4 Basic or Universal Forces
    • gravity 
    • electromagnetism 
    • sub- atomic week force 
    • strong force that holds atoms together