If a ball is rolling and there is no force acting on the ball what wiil it do?

Answer 1

The ball will keep rolling, because of Isaac newton's Third law of Motion, "An object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. If there is no force acting on the ball, then there is no unbalanced force. Although this question is phrased incorrectly because there is a force acting on it if it is moving, momentum, I think the answer you are looking for is it will keep rolling. The ball will keep rolling, because of Isaac Newton's Third law of Motion, "An object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. If there is no force acting on the ball, then there is no unbalanced force. Although this question is phrased incorrectly because there is a force acting on it if it is moving, momentum, I think the answer you are looking for is it will keep rolling.

Answer 2

Gravity is pulling the ball down onto the ground. Additionally, if the ball is on a slope of any kind, gravity will be acting to accelerate the ball down the slope. Air friction (drag) is acting on it, as is the "rolling resistance" associated with friction due to its contact with the ground. And it keeps rolling due to inertia it carries in its current motion.

Answer 3

There are two different cases: (assuming a frictionless surface and a vacuum so no wind resistance)

Case 1: Ball has no acceleration i.e. constant velocity when it encounters the frictionless surface

In this case, since there are no forces pushing the ball, the ball can't speed up (obviously). Since there are no frictional forces however trying to slow it down, the ball will continue on its trajectory at the same speed for however long the frictionless surface goes.

Case 2: Ball has acceleration i.e. speeding up, when it encounters the frictionless surface

In this case, there was some sort of initial force that gave this ball acceleration. From the equation

F = ma, whatever force was applied to the ball, divided by the mass will give you the acceleration. This acceleration will make the ball go faster and faster as it travels down the frictionless surface. Since there are no frictional forces to slow down this acceleration, the acceleration remains constant and the ball keeps getting faster and faster till it almost approaches the speed of light (due to I believe Quantum Physics stating you can not reach the speed of light).

In their respective cases, if you DID have frictional forces, for Case 1 the frictional surface would start chopping away at the momentum of the ball (P = mv; v stands for velocity) until the ball stops.

In Case 2 with a frictional surface, the ball is initially traveling at an acceleration. For simplicity purposes, we will assume the initial force applied to the ball was an impulse so no change in acceleration, just a "constant" acceleration. The frictional surface will then start chopping away at the acceleration of the ball to bring it down from it's initial value, to then zero acceleration and then leads up to what happened in the preceding paragraph about acceleration going into negative territory and slowing the ball to a stop.

Incidentally, since there are no frictional forces on the ball, the ball will slide across the surface, not roll. Roll involves being able to grip a surface. Think of trying to accelerate on a patch of ice with your car. You don't move anywhere with the rolling tires, they'll just spin and you won't move.

Hope this helps (and also cross your fingers that I worked this through logically and correctly).

Answer 4

If there are no external forces acting on the ball while it is rolling, it will continue to roll at a constant velocity due to its inertia.

Answer 5

If it was moving it would have to have forces acting upon it; unless everything else in the universe had a force act upon them equally.

Answer 6

It will keep going down the hallway for ever assuming of course that you can fin a hallway that long.

Answer 7

The object will remain at rest unless force is applied.

Answer 8

An object in motion will remain in motion until forces act upon it.

Answer 9

According to Newton's laws of motion, the object will remain in motion.

Answer 10

Straight