Newton’s Third Law of Motion

Claimed by Arohi Bhakhri

In 1686, Sir Issac Newton presented his three laws of motion in the "Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis." Newton's three laws of motion are integral to understanding why forces have the effect they do upon other bodies. Forces are products of interactions between bodies and can be defined as a interaction that has some type of effect on the motion of an object when unopposed. Forces can result by a number of contact interactions (frictional, normal, tension, applied) or just interactions between some radius (gravitational, electrical, magnetic forces). Newton's Third Law of Motion states that when there is an interaction between two objects, they are both exerting forces upon each other. A simple example would be if you were sitting down on a bench--your body exerts the same amount of force on the bencth that the bench exerts on your body, just in an opposite direction. These two forces are examples of action-reaction pairs, which is what Newton's Third Law is entirely based around. Formally stated, Newton's third law is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The Main Idea

As stated above, Newton's Third Law states that if object A exerts a force on object B, then object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A.

The third law means that all forces are interactions between different bodies, and thus that there is no such thing as a unidirectional force or a force that acts on only one body. This law is sometimes referred to as the action-reaction law, with FA called the "action" and FB the "reaction". The action and the reaction are simultaneous, and it does not matter which is called the action and which is called reaction; both forces are part of a single interaction, and neither force exists without the other.

Visualize Newton's Third Law: Video

A Mathematical Model

Using the system of A and B, we can say that the force of A on B is equal and opposite to that of B on A.

F(AB) = −F(BA)

A Computational Model

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