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Forces and Motion

This document defines key physics terms related to forces, motion, and mechanics. It provides definitions for 20 terms including acceleration, balanced forces, braking distance, contact force, elastic deformation, friction, Hooke's law, momentum, Newton's laws of motion, plastic deformation, resultant force, spring constant, terminal velocity, and more. The definitions are concise statements explaining each term and concept at a basic level.

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adivahussain2007
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15 views

Forces and Motion

This document defines key physics terms related to forces, motion, and mechanics. It provides definitions for 20 terms including acceleration, balanced forces, braking distance, contact force, elastic deformation, friction, Hooke's law, momentum, Newton's laws of motion, plastic deformation, resultant force, spring constant, terminal velocity, and more. The definitions are concise statements explaining each term and concept at a basic level.

Uploaded by

adivahussain2007
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Definitions

Acceleration – rate of change of velocity. It can be calculated from the gradient of the velocity time
graph.

Balanced forces – a resultant force of zero.

Braking distance – The distance a vehicle travels under a braking force.

Contact force – a force that acts on an object through physical contact.

Distortion - the changing of an object’s size or shape as a result of deforming force.

Elastic Deformation - a non-permanent deformation for which the object will return to its original shape
when the deforming forces are removed.

Elastic limit - the force beyond an object which an object will no longer deform elastically and will
instead deform plastically.

Equilibrium - an object is an equilibrium if the resultant force and resultant movement are both equal to
0.

Friction - a resistive contact force that acts to oppose the relative motion between two surfaces.

Hooke’s law- the extension of a spring is directly proportional to the force applied to it, up to the limit of
proportionality.

Human reaction time- the time it takes for the brain to react to a stimulus. Local human reaction times
are in the range of 0.2-0.9 seconds.

Limit of proportionality- the point beyond which the extension of an elastic object is no longer directly
proportional to the force applied to it.

Linear relationship: a relationship between two variables where if one variable increase so does the
other by the same factor, they produce straight lines when plotted.

Moment: the turning effect of a force equal to the product of the magnitude of the force and the
perpendicular distance from the pivot to the line action of the force.

Momentum: the product of an object’s mass and velocity.

Newton's first law: if stationary objects result in force is zero the object will remain stationary. If a
moving object’s result in force is zero, the object will continue to move at a constant velocity.

Newton second law: an object's acceleration is directly proportional to the resultant force acting on it
and is inversely proportional to the object's mass.

Newton said law: for every action in nature there is an opposite and equal reaction.

Plastic defamation: a permanent deformation for which the object will no longer return to its original
shape when the deforming forces are removed.
Principle of moments: for an object in equilibrium the sum of the clockwise moments of any point on the
object must be equal to the anticlockwise moments at the same point.

Resultant force: a single force that can replace all the individual forces acting on the object.

Spring constant: woman a measure of a spring’s stiffness where the higher the spring constant the
smaller the extension is for a given force.

Terminal velocity: the maximum velocity an object can reach when falling through a fluid. It occurs when
the resistive forces equal the object's weight.

Velocity: a vector quantity that is a measure of the change of displacement, it is the speed in a given
direction.

Weight: the forces acting on an object due to gravity. Weight acts through its centre of gravity.

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