Newton’s first law of motion is often stated as:
An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
Let’s look at some examples:
- Blood rushes from your head to your feet while quickly stopping when riding on a descending elevator.
- The head of a hammer can be tightened onto the wooden handle by banging the bottom of the handle against a hard surface.
- A brick is painlessly broken over the hand of a physics teacher by slamming it with a hammer. (CAUTION: do not attempt this at home!)
- To dislodge ketchup from the bottom of a ketchup bottle, it is often turned upside down and thrusted downward at high speeds and then abruptly halted.
- Headrests are placed in cars to prevent whiplash injuries during rear-end collisions.
- While riding a bicycle, you fly forward over the handlebars when hitting a curb or rock or other object which abruptly halts the motion of the bicycle.
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