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The first law states that any object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by another force. For example, a spaceship in outer space will not speed up or slow down if it there is no net force acting on it. Another example is riding your bike. Once you are traveling at some speed on your bike you will not slow down unless acted upon by another force. We know of course that we do slow down when we do not apply force to the pedals. This is because the force of air resistance and friction acting on the system.

The second law states that force is equivalent to the mass of an object times acceleration. Force can be thought of as on objects resistance to move. When we push a shopping cart, we apply a force that causes an acceleration of the cart. Acceleration is simply a change in velocity and the cart experiences an acceleration because it goes from a zero velocity to some on-zero velocity.

These two are not the same because the first states that if the sum of all forces acting on an object is zero, then there is no acceleration (change in velocity), while the second gives an expression as to how we define these forces.

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14y ago

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