research paper on newton's laws of motion

Newton’s Laws of Motion

Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion explain the relationship between a physical object and the forces acting upon it. Understanding this information provides us with the basis of modern physics.

What are Newton’s Laws of Motion?

An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force., the acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied..

• Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite on the first.

Sir Isaac Newton worked in many areas of mathematics and physics. He developed the theories of gravitation in 1666 when he was only 23 years old. In 1686, he presented his three laws of motion in the “Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis.”

By developing his three laws of motion, Newton revolutionized science. Newton’s laws together with Kepler’s Laws explained why planets move in elliptical orbits rather than in circles.

Below is a short movie featuring Orville and Wilbur Wright and a discussion about how Newton’s Laws of Motion applied to the flight of their aircraft.

Newton’s First Law: Inertia

Newton’s first law states that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. This tendency to resist changes in a state of motion is  inertia . If all the external forces cancel each other out, then there is no net force acting on the object.  If there is no net force acting on the object, then the object will maintain a constant velocity.

Examples of inertia involving aerodynamics:

• The motion of an airplane when a pilot changes the throttle setting of an engine.
• The motion of a ball falling down through the atmosphere.
• A model rocket being launched up into the atmosphere.
• The motion of a kite when the wind changes.

Newton’s Second Law: Force

His second law defines a  force  to be equal to change in  momentum  (mass times velocity) per change in time. Momentum is defined to be the mass  m  of an object times its velocity  V .

Let us assume that we have an airplane at a point “0” defined by its location  X 0  and time  t 0 . The airplane has a mass  m 0  and travels at velocity  V 0 . An external force F to the airplane shown above moves it to point “1”. The airplane’s new location is X 1 and time t 1 .

The mass and velocity of the airplane change during the flight to values  m 1  and  V1 . Newton’s second law can help us determine the new values of  V 1  and  m 1 , if we know how big the force  F  is. Let us just take the difference between the conditions at point “1” and the conditions at point “0”.

\(\LARGE F = \frac{m_1 \cdot V_1 – m_0 \cdot V_0}{t_1 – t_0} \)

Newton’s second law talks about changes in momentum (m V). So, at this point, we can’t separate out how much the mass changed and how much the velocity changed. We only know how much product (m V) changed.

Let us assume that the mass stays at a constant value equal to m . This assumption is rather good for an airplane because the only change in mass would be for the fuel burned between point “1” and point “0”. The weight of the fuel is probably small relative to the weight of the rest of the airplane, especially if we only look at small changes in time. If we were discussing the flight of a baseball, then certainly the mass remains a constant. But if we were discussing the flight of a bottle rocket, then the mass does not remain a constant and we can only look at changes in momentum. For a constant mass  m , Newton’s second law looks like:

\(\LARGE F = \frac{m \cdot (V_1 – V_0)}{t_1 – t_0} \)

The change in velocity divided by the change in time is the definition of the acceleration  a . The second law then reduces to the more familiar product of a mass and an acceleration:

\(\LARGE F = m \cdot a \)

Remember that this relation is only good for objects that have a constant mass. This equation tells us that an object subjected to an external force will accelerate and that the amount of the acceleration is proportional to the size of the force. The amount of acceleration is also inversely proportional to the mass of the object; for equal forces, a heavier object will experience less acceleration than a lighter object. Considering the momentum equation, a force causes a change in velocity; and likewise, a change in velocity generates a force. The equation works both ways.

The velocity, force, acceleration, and momentum have both a  magnitude  and a  direction  associated with them. Scientists and mathematicians call this a vector quantity. The equations shown here are actually vector equations and can be applied in each of the component directions. We have only looked at one direction, and, in general, an object moves in all three directions (up-down, left-right, forward-back).

Example of force involving aerodynamics:

• An aircraft’s motion resulting from aerodynamic forces, aircraft weight, and thrust.

Newton’s Third Law: Action & Reaction

Whenever one object exerts a force on a second object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first..

His third law states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction . If object A exerts a force on object B, object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A. In other words, forces result from interactions.

Examples of action and reaction involving aerodynamics:

• The motion of lift from an airfoil, the air is deflected downward by the airfoil’s action, and in reaction, the wing is pushed upward.
• The motion of a spinning ball, the air is deflected to one side, and the ball reacts by moving in the opposite direction.
• The motion of a jet engine produces thrust and hot exhaust gases flow out the back of the engine, and a thrusting force is produced in the opposite direction.

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8 Newton and the Laws of Motion

• Published: March 2020
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In his Principia (1687), Sir Isaac Newton laid out his discovery of the laws of motions and the law of universal gravitation. His historic journey involved a critical moment when, aided by discussions with Robert Hooke, he conquered the challenge of circular motion, e.g. one body circling another, by introducing the concept of force. The Principia was a tour-de-force demonstration of the intelligibility of the universe and ultimately broke physics away from philosophy. This work led directly to the concept of energy.

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Article contents

The third law in newton's mechanics.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Most modern analysts of Newton's laws of motion, whether they have approached the subject from a historical or from a philosophical viewpoint, have tended to concentrate on the status of the first two laws; the third law has largely been overlooked, or else it has been dismissed as somehow less interesting. My purpose in this paper is to reverse this approach—I intend to investigate some of the historical aspects of the third law, particularly the empirical background to Newton's statement of it, and in so doing, I intend to skirt most of the questions which have been raised concerning the status of the other two laws. In concentrating on the historical aspects of the third law, I shall also by-pass Mach's controversial re-interpretation of its role in mechanics, for while Mach saw the law as the basis for an operational definition of “mass”, it is quite clear that Newton did not so regard it. On the contrary, Newton seems to have regarded all three of his laws as straightforward statements of fact about the world, so that a knowledge of the factual background to the laws is a fundamental pre-requisite to an understanding of Newton's thought.

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1 Newton , Isaac , Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (trans. Motte , Andrew , revised by Florian Cajori , Berkeley , 1962 ), i , 13 Google Scholar . In the original Latin, the law reads: “Actioni contrariam semper & aequalem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse aequales & in partes contrarias dirigi.”

2 Ibid. , 17, 19.

3 Ibid. , 164 ff.

4 Ibid. , 22–25.

5 Ibid. , 26–28.

6 A hint to this effect was given some years ago by Lenzen , V. F. in his article, “ Newton's Third Law of Motion ”, Isis , xxvii ( 1937 ), 258 –60 CrossRef Google Scholar , but he did not take the matter any further.

7 Newton , Isaac , Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light ( New York , 1952 , based on 4th edn. , London, 1730), 344 . Google Scholar

8 Ibid. , 339.

9 It is perfectly true, of course, that in terms of Newton's particulate theory of light, the action and reaction between a body and light may be reduced ultimately to accelerative forces between particles of the body and particles of light. The first passage just quoted shows, however, that the reduction to such forces is not necessary in order to assess the action and reaction. The action is to be assessed directly in terms of the light emitted, the reaction is to be assessed in terms of the heat generated. Hence my point stands. It is interesting to note that in the passage leading up to his own formulation of the action-reaction law (composed in 1695), Leibniz left the meaning of “action” and “reaction” equally vague, even though his discussion was confined to impact phenomena, one field to which Newton had applied his third law in very precise terms. Leibniz's discussion was as follows:

“the passion of every body is spontaneous, or arises from internal force, although upon external occasion. I understand here, however, passion proper, which arises from percussion … For since the percussion is the same, to whatever at length true motion corresponds, it follows that the result of the percussion is distributed equally between both, and thus both act equally in the encounter, and thus half the result arises from the action of the one, the other half from the action of the other; and since half, also, of the result or passion is in one, half in the other, it is sufficient that we derive the passion which is in one from the action also which is in itself, and we need no influence of the one upon the other, although by the action of one an occasion is furnished the other for producing a change in itself. Certainly, while A and B meet, the resistance of the bodies, united with their elasticity, causes them to be compressed because of the percussion, and the compression is equal in each … Then the balls A and B, restoring themselves by the force of their own violent … elasticity, mutually repel each other by turns, and spread out, as it were, in an arc, and, with a force equal on both sides, each is driven back by the other, and so, not by the force of the other, but by its own force, it recedes from that one … From what has been said, it is understood that the action of bodies is never without reaction, and both are equal to each other, and directly contrary.”

( Leibniz , Gottfreid Wilhelm , New Essays concerning Human Understanding (trans. Langley , Alfred Gideon , New York , 1896 , 688 – 689 ) Google Scholar . How are we to measure the “compression”, or the “force of [a body's] own violent elasticity”? We are not told.

10 Principia , 21 . Google Scholar

11 Dugas , René , Mechanics in the Seventeenth Century (trans. Jacquot , Freda , Neuchâtel , , Switzerland , 1958 ), 350 . Google Scholar

12 Gilbert , William , On the Magnet (trans. Thompson , Silvanus P. , ed. Price , Derek J. , New York , 1958 ), 67 . Google Scholar

13 Boyle , Robert , Experiments and Notes about the Mechanical Origine or Production of Electricity ( facsimile , ed., New York , 1945 ), 17 – 20 . Google Scholar

14 Principia , 25 – 26 . Google Scholar

15 The argument just described, and also the statement, “This law takes place also in attractions, as will be proved in the next Scholium,” were added to the second edition of the Principia as a result of Newton's correspondence with Cotes. It has already been argued elsewhere ( Koyré , Alexandre , “ Études Newtoniennes III: Attraction, Newton and Cotes ”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences , xiv ( 1961 ), 225 – 236 ) Google Scholar that the only way we can explain Newton's reasoning is “to admit that for Newton ‘attraction’, all the pseudo-positivistic and agnostic talk notwithstanding, was a real force (though not a mechanical and perhaps not even a ‘physical’ one) by which bodies really acted upon each other”.

16 Le Meccaniche ( ca. 1600). Trans. Stillman Drake, and published in Galilei , Galileo , On Motion and On Mechanics ( Madison , Wisconsin , 1960 ). Google Scholar

17 Ibid. , 180.

18 Particularly in his Discourse on Bodies in Water (Urbana, Illinois, 1960 ) Google Scholar , and in the socalled “Sixth Day” intended for his Two New Sciences (published in French translation in Moscovici , S. , “ Remarques sur le dialogue de Galilée ‘De la force de la percussion’ ”, Revue d'histoire des sciences , xvi ( 1963 ), 97 – 137 ) Google Scholar . See, for example, pp. 6–8 of the former work, or p. 125 of Moscovici's article.

19 E.g. in a letter to Mersenne dated 12 September 1638, and in another, also to Mersenne, dated 2 February 1643. Both are published in Adam , Charles and Tannery , Paul (eds.), Oeuvres de Descartes ( Paris , 1897 – 1913 ) Google Scholar . The first is in vol. ii, 352–362, the second is in vol. iii, 611–615.

20 Principia , 26 . Google Scholar

21 Ibid. 2.

22 Ibid. 13.

23 Ibid. , 27.

24 Ibid. , 28 (my italics).

25 It should be added that a formal difference remained between the case of simple machines and the others. Whenever the product involved a vis inertiae , the velocity which formed the other term in the product was obtained as the vector difference of two other velocities—in other words, it was always a change in velocity. In the case of the machines, the velocities used in forming the products were always genuine ones (though virtual), and not vector differences.

26 Descartes , , Oeuvres ( op. cit. (19)), ix , 89 – 93 . Google Scholar

27 Oeuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens (La Haye, 1888 – 1950 ), xvi , 180 . Google Scholar

28 Wallis , John , “ A Summary Account… of the General Laws of Motion … ”, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. , iii ( 1668 ), 864 – 866 . CrossRef Google Scholar

29 Cambridge University Library, Add. MS. 4004 , f. 13.

30 A diagram accompanying the text makes it clear that pressures “towards w” and “towards v” are in fact acting in opposite directions.

31 Wren initiated the experimental study of impacts before the Royal Society some time during the 1660's, while Mariotte's work first appeared in 1673 under the title Traité de la percussion ou du choc des corps (reprinted in Oeuvres de M. Mariotte, de l'Académie Royale des Sciences (La Haye, 1740 ), 1 – 116 ) Google Scholar . There has been some dispute concerning the extent to which Mariotte's work was original. Huygens, for instance, stated flatly that

“Mariotte has taken everything from me, as those of the Académie des Sciences, M. du Hamel, M. Gallois, and the records, can testify: the machine, the experiment on the elasticity of glass spheres, the experiment on one or several balls pushed together against a row of similar balls, the theorems I had published. He should have mentioned my name. I told him so one day, and he did not know what to answer…” (Quoted by Dugas , , op. cit. (11), 289 ). Google Scholar Again, Tait has argued (P. G. Tait, “Note on a Singular Passage in the Principia ”, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh , 19 January 1885; reprinted in Tait , 's Scientific Papers ( Cambridge , 1900 ), ii , 110 – 114 ) Google Scholar that Newton's reference to Mariotte was extremely sarcastic, though the sarcasm has been lost in Motte's translation. Tait's supposition is that Newton knew that most of the ideas claimed as his own by Mariotte had been put forward earlier by Wren. Such criticism is hardly fair to Mariotte, for while many of the ideas he espoused were undoubtedly borrowed without acknowledgement, others were clearly his own, and certainly the synthesis he achieved was entirely his own.

32 Principia , 24 . Google Scholar

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• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400003174

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Newton’s first law: the law of inertia

• Newton’s second law: F = ma
• Newton’s third law: the law of action and reaction
• Influence of Newton’s laws

What are Newton’s laws of motion?

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Newton’s laws of motion

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Newton’s laws of motion relate an object’s motion to the forces acting on it. In the first law, an object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it. In the second law, the force on an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration. In the third law, when two objects interact, they apply forces to each other of equal magnitude and opposite direction.

Why are Newton’s laws of motion important?

Newton’s laws of motion are important because they are the foundation of classical mechanics, one of the main branches of physics . Mechanics is the study of how objects move or do not move when forces act upon them.

Newton’s laws of motion , three statements describing the relations between the forces acting on a body and the motion of the body, first formulated by English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton , which are the foundation of classical mechanics .

Newton’s first law states that if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force . In fact, in classical Newtonian mechanics, there is no important distinction between rest and uniform motion in a straight line; they may be regarded as the same state of motion seen by different observers, one moving at the same velocity as the particle and the other moving at constant velocity with respect to the particle. This postulate is known as the law of inertia .

The law of inertia was first formulated by Galileo Galilei for horizontal motion on Earth and was later generalized by René Descartes . Although the principle of inertia is the starting point and the fundamental assumption of classical mechanics, it is less than intuitively obvious to the untrained eye. In Aristotelian mechanics and in ordinary experience, objects that are not being pushed tend to come to rest. The law of inertia was deduced by Galileo from his experiments with balls rolling down inclined planes.

For Galileo, the principle of inertia was fundamental to his central scientific task: he had to explain how is it possible that if Earth is really spinning on its axis and orbiting the Sun, we do not sense that motion. The principle of inertia helps to provide the answer: since we are in motion together with Earth and our natural tendency is to retain that motion, Earth appears to us to be at rest. Thus, the principle of inertia, far from being a statement of the obvious, was once a central issue of scientific contention . By the time Newton had sorted out all the details, it was possible to accurately account for the small deviations from this picture caused by the fact that the motion of Earth’s surface is not uniform motion in a straight line (the effects of rotational motion are discussed below). In the Newtonian formulation, the common observation that bodies that are not pushed tend to come to rest is attributed to the fact that they have unbalanced forces acting on them, such as friction and air resistance.

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Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation

In 1687 English physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) published a law of universal gravitation in his influential work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). In its simplest form, Newton's law of universal gravitation states that bodies with mass attract each other with a force that varies directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square of the distance between them. This mathematically elegant law, however, offered a remarkably reasoned and profound insight into the mechanics of the natural world because revealed a cosmos bound together by the mutual gravitational attraction of its constituent particles. Moreover, along with Newton's laws of motion, the law of universal gravitation became the guiding model for the future development of physical law. Newton's law of universal gravitation was derived from German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler's (1571-1630) laws of planetary motion, the concept of "action-at-a-distance," and Newton's own laws of motion. Building on Galileo's observations of falling bodies, Newton asserted that gravity is a universal property of all matter. Although the force of gravity can become infinitesimally small at increasing distances between bodies, all bodies of mass exert gravitational force on each other. Newton extrapolated that the force of gravity (later characterized by the gravitational field) extended to infinity and, in so doing, bound the universe together. more

The historical context of Newton's Third Law and the teaching of mechanics

• Published: December 1993
• Volume 23 , pages 95–103, ( 1993 )

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Many studies have shown that Newton's Third Law of Motion is not easy for students to accept when they consider the interaction of two objects. A number of prominent science educators believe that it should not be taught to students before Year 11. This paper reports the results of a study of the historical origins of Newton's Third Law with a view to identifying the context from which it emerged in the 17th century and the conceptual changes which accompanied its emergence. Some of the possible implications of a study such as this for improving the teaching of introductory mechanics are discussed.

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Gauld, C. The historical context of Newton's Third Law and the teaching of mechanics. Research in Science Education 23 , 95–103 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02357049

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Newton's Laws of Motion

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Newton's first law is expressed in textual form. It states that, unless acted upon by a net unbalanced force, an object will remain at rest, or move uniformly forward in a straight line. Accordingly, " inertial motion " means uniform rectilinear motion, while uniform circular motion is considered to be a noninertial, accelerated motion. This differentiation between the two types of motion has resulted in the aftermath in different analytical treatments of the two types, both in classical and relativistic kinematics. In this short note, we show, based on Newton's kinematics, that, contrary to the conventional differentiation between rectilinear and circular systems of motion, the two are dynamically equivalent, such that the set of laws describing the dynamics of one system correspond to an identical set of laws describing the dynamics of the second. An immediate corollary for the special case of uniform motion is that Newtonian kinematics are inconsistent with Newton's first law and are, instead, consistent with Galileo's definition of inertial motion. To rectify the apparent inconsistency, we propose a natural modification of the first law, which incorporates the case of uniform circular motion. We formulate the modified law textually and mathematically and comment briefly on the implication of our modification to the theory and education of classical and relativistic physics.

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Most modern analysts of Newton&#39;s laws of motion, whether they have approached the subject from a historical or from a philosophical viewpoint, have tended to concentrate on the status of the first two laws; the third law has largely been overlooked, or else it has been dismissed as somehow less interesting. My purpose in this paper is to reverse this approach—I intend to investigate some of the historical aspects of the third law, particularly the empirical background to Newton&#39;s statement of it, and in so doing, I intend to skirt most of the questions which have been raised concerning the status of the other two laws. In concentrating on the historical aspects of the third law, I shall also by-pass Mach&#39;s controversial re-interpretation of its role in mechanics, for while Mach saw the law as the basis for an operational definition of “mass”, it is quite clear that Newton did not so regard it. On the contrary, Newton seems to have regarded all three of his laws as straig...

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We've Been Misreading a Major Law of Physics For The Last 300 Years

When Isaac Newton inscribed onto parchment his now-famed laws of motion in 1687, he could have only hoped we'd be discussing them three centuries later.

Writing in Latin, Newton outlined three universal principles describing how the motion of objects is governed in our Universe, which have been translated, transcribed, discussed and debated at length.

But according to a philosopher of language and mathematics, we might have been interpreting Newton's precise wording of his first law of motion slightly wrong all along.

Virginia Tech philosopher Daniel Hoek wanted to "set the record straight" after discovering what he describes as a "clumsy mistranslation" in the original 1729 English translation of Newton's Latin Principia .

Based on this translation, countless academics and teachers have since interpreted Newton's first law of inertia to mean an object will continue moving in a straight line or remain at rest unless an outside force intervenes.

It's a description that works well until you appreciate external forces are constantly at work, something Newton would have surely considered in his wording.

Revisiting the archives, Hoek realized this common paraphrasing featured a misinterpretation that flew under the radar until 1999, when two scholars picked up on the translation of one Latin word that had been overlooked: quatenus, which means "insofar", not unless.

To Hoek, this makes all the difference. Rather than describing how an object maintains its momentum if no forces are impressed on it, Hoek says the new reading shows Newton meant that every change in a body's momentum – every jolt, dip, swerve, and spurt – is due to external forces.

"By putting that one forgotten word [insofar] back in place, [those scholars] restored one of the fundamental principles of physics to its original splendor," Hoek explains in a blog post describing his findings, published academically in a 2022 research paper .

However, that all-important correction never caught on. Even now it might struggle to gain traction against the weight of centuries of repetition.

"Some find my reading too wild and unconventional to take seriously," Hoek remarks . "Others think that it is so obviously correct that it is barely worth arguing for."

Ordinary folks might agree it sounds like semantics. And Hoek admits the reinterpretation hasn't and won't change physics. But carefully inspecting Newton's own writings clarifies what the pioneering mathematician was thinking at the time.

"A great deal of ink has been spilt on the question what the law of inertia is really for," explains Hoek, who was puzzled as a student by what Newton meant.

If we take the prevailing translation, of objects traveling in straight lines until a force compels them otherwise, then it raises the question: why would Newton write a law about bodies free of external forces when there is no such thing in our Universe; when gravity and friction are ever-present?

"The whole point of the first law is to infer the existence of the force," George Smith, a philosopher at Tufts University and an expert in Newton's writings, told journalist Stephanie Pappas for Scientific American.

In fact, Newton gave three concrete examples to illustrate his first law of motion: the most insightful, according to Hoek , being a spinning top – that as we know, slows in a tightening spiral due to the friction of air.

"By giving this example," Hoek writes , "Newton explicitly shows us how the First Law, as he understands it, applies to accelerating bodies which are subject to forces – that is, it applies to bodies in the real world."

Hoek says this revised interpretation brings home one of Newton's most fundamental ideas that was utterly revolutionary at the time. That is, the planets, stars, and other heavenly bodies are all governed by the same physical laws as objects on Earth.

"Every change in speed and every tilt in direction," Hoek muses – from swarms of atoms to swirling galaxies – "is governed by Newton's First Law."

Making us all feel once again connected to the farthest reaches of space.

The paper has been published in the Philosophy of Science .

An earlier version of this article was published in September 2023.