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A net force of zero means that an object behaves as if there are no forces acting upon it, although this may not be the case. Usually objects have many forces acting upon them. Just your computer that is sitting on your desk is experiencing a force of gravity, the force from the table pushing up on the computer, a frictional force holding the computer in place, etc. We can add the effects of these forces to determine one force that produces the same effect as every force that acts upon the object. This is called the principle of superpostion, which states that every force can be added to other forces to find a single net force. In the case of the computer, the force of gravity is cancelled out by the force of the table pushing up on the computer. So far we have zero force. The force of friction will resist any force that you exert upon the computer, so that force is also zero. As long as your computer is at rest and not sliding across the table, it is experiencing zero net force, while there are really many forces acting upon it.

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16y ago

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