Applying Newton’s Laws

The best way to learn how to solve physics problems is to solve physics problems. You can’t just read about it and think about it in your head… you actually have to do it, just like riding a bike. You can read all about bicycles, how they work and what the individual parts do, but until you sit in the seat and try to ride the thing, it’s really hard to understand. I am going to do a series of different sample physics problems in the videos below and explain everything in detail so you can really see how to apply Newton’s Laws of Motion to problems in the real world.

After you’re done watching the samples, download your practice problem set (at the end of the lessons) and try it yourself!

Sleds are great to practice physics problems with, because there’s no friction associated with the problem (it’s sitting on ice, not on the ground). This is a good one to start with to get used to how we use the kinematic equations along with Newton’s laws and FBD’s to solve real problems.

This is a really common thing to see happen in the real world, and one that people have a hard time seeing from the point of view of an outside observer just sitting on the side of the road. If you’ve ever been in a truck where this happened to you, now you know why.

Here’s a good example of how non-moving objects can be analyzed for missing components by setting the acceleration term in Newton’s second law to zero. (Although I’ve never tried this one, I can only imagine that in the real world, the tire would actually be moving.)

This is a good example of Newton’s second and third laws in action and how to use both laws to help you solve a problem…

Imagine this one is a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and you want to find out if your cables are strong enough…

This is a great example of how to calculate forces for a static (no motion) system, and then what happens if you break loose and allow motion to happen. Note how the coordinate system was oriented to make the math a lot easier.

Pulley problems are common in physics, and in this example you will learn how to draw FBD with different coordinate systems that work with each drawing individually.