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Last updated  11th March 2010                   Sensors           Logbooks           UK PriceLists          Investigations         2010 Catalogue

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Relationship between force, mass and acceleration

Newton's Second Law of Motion is concerned with the effect that unbalanced forces have on motion.

An unbalanced force acting on an object causes it to accelerate. There are two points to note about the acceleration of an object when an unbalanced force acts on it:

bulletThe bigger the unbalanced force acting on the object the bigger the acceleration of the object.
bulletThe more mass the object has the more inclined it is to resist any change in its motion. For example, if you apply the same unbalanced force to a mass of 1000 kg and a mass of 1 kg, the acceleration (change in motion) of the 1000 kg mass will be much less than that of the 1 kg mass.

Newton's Second Law provides a relationship between the unbalanced force on the object, the mass of the object and the acceleration that is produced: unbalanced force = mass x acceleration or F = ma.

The unbalanced force F is measured in newtons (N), the mass m is measured in kilograms (kg) and acceleration a is measured in metres per second per second (m/s2).

 

This show how the Force and the Distance sensors were set up to study the Newton's second law. 

View and/or download the worksheet

View and/or download the Datadisc file examples of this investigation.

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(you must have Datadisc installed to view the file, downloadable from

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