In order to figure out what’s going on with an object, you have to take a look at the forces being applied to it. Forces are a vector, meaning that they have a direction and a magnitude. Your weight is not just a number, but it’s also in the downward direction. When we look at the forces that act on an object (or system of objects), we need to know how to combine all the forces into a single, resultant force which makes our math a lot easier. Here’s a set of videos that will show you how to do this:

[am4show have=’p9;p58;’ guest_error=’Guest error message’ user_error=’User error message’ ]

Click here to go to next lesson on Practicing Resultant Forces.

[/am4show]