Newton's Laws Of Motion Essay

Lillian Harris
Mr. Marcum
Science, 4
November 2, 2009

In this paper you will read about Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion.
Sir Isaac Newton was a British physicist. Many people regard him as the greatest physicist of all time.   His work is often compared with that of Archimedes and Galileo. The scientific discoveries that he made have given way to new scientific ideas and realizations today. Isaac Newton created the 3 Laws of Motion. These laws explain the properties of motion, why objects move in a certain manner, and what causes them to move that way.
The first law of motion, also called the law of inertia, states: “an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. An object at rest stays at rest unless it is acted upon by an external force.” This means that when an object is moving, it will stay moving unless a force interferes with it.   It also means that when an object is stopped, it will remain that way until an outside force disrupts it.   The thing that causes an object to reject motion or resist the urge to stop is called inertia. For example: A boy is traveling at a constant speed of 5 m/s on his skateboard. The boy takes a wrong turn and hits a tree stump. The board comes to a halt, and the boy flies off of the skateboard from the impact of the collision. In this case, the object in motion was the boy on his skateboard. The force that was preventing the boy on the skateboard from stopping is inertia. The tree stump acted as the external force that interfered with the skateboard. With an object, the amount of mass that object has will increase its inertia. In other words, the more mass you have, the more inertia there will be. Mass is the measurement of the amount of matter in an object. Mass can also be defined as how much inertia something has.
The second law of motion says: “A net force acting on an object causes an object to accelerate in the direction of the net force applied.” In simpler terms, this law means...