physics force unit

Question

1) An angry bowler kicks a bowling ball with a force of 300 N. What happens to the bowler?

2) You are standing in the middle of a flat bed truck at a red light wearing rollerblades; don't try this, it is extremely dangerous! The light changes and the truck begins to accelerate. What happens to you?

a) Describe what will happen to the object.

b) State which of Newton’s Three Laws of Motion best explains why your answer to part A occurred.

Answer 1

1) The bowler hurts his foot! Apparently his teacher never told him about Newton’s 3rd Law.

2) Nothing, until the truck has moved far enough for you to fall off the back and probably break your back! Due to inertia, you’d stay put for a bit and then fall nearly straight to the ground due to gravity. If you weren’t an expert you’d likely break a bone or two.

Why is physics always about people getting hurt? That’s no phun!

Answer 2

1. By Newton's third law, the bowler's foot would receive 300N of force in return.
2. By Newton's first law, an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless a force is applied to it. Hence, the person would stay in the same space and literally fall off the truck.

Just a quick note. The biggest reason why the person in scenario 2 stayed in place is because there's almost no force applied to him to keep him/her ON the truck. So, there's virtually no force keeping the individual on the car, hence the person "stays at rest" as stated by the law. Now, if the individual were to be somehow super glued to the car, the force of friction will be applied to the individual making him stay on the car.