Question

While driving down the road, a firefly strikes the windshield of a bus and makes a quite obvious mess in front of the face of the driver. This is a clear case of Newton's third law of motion. The firefly hit the bus and the bus hits the firefly. Which of the two forces is greater: the force on the firefly or the force on the bus?

Answer 1

Answer:

Both forces have the same magnitude

Explanation:

1) Notation

$F_{bus}$= force exterted by the bus to the firefly

$F_{firefly}$= force exterded by the firefly to the bus

2) Analysis for the situation

The reason why is from the Third law of Newton that states: "For every action, there is an equal reaction force on the opposite direction to the original action force".

For this special case on math terms we have:

$F_{bus}=F_{firefly}$

The fact that the firefly splatter on this case is because since have a smaller mass, it is less able to stand up to the larger acceleration from the interaction.

3) Conclusion

Based on this analysis, each force would have the same magnitude, so none force is greater than the other.