Applying Newton's Three Laws

Applications of Newton's Laws

Now that we have established the fundamentals of dynamics through Newton's Laws, we can apply them to a variety of physical situations to see their full use. As stated before, Newton's Laws apply in almost every physical situation. There are, however, a number of forces that most commonly arise. We will limit our application to these forces: normal force, frictional force and tension force. From these three quite common forces we will be able to predict the outcome of a variety of physical situations.

These three forces, normal, tension and friction, are present in a surprising number of physical situations. Often the three forces are all present, as we shall see in the problems. Though Newton's Laws apply in some sense to everything from quantum mechanics to electricity, these forces (along with gravity) form the basis for applications within classic mechanics.