Question

Ben is pushing a small trolley 10 N to the north and but Gary is pushing the trolley 5 N to the south. What is the total applied force on the trolley?

Answer 1

Answer:

The total applied force on the trolley is 5 N toward the North.

Explanation:

In this problem, Ben is pushing the trolley to north and Gary is pushing it to south. So both the forces are acting 180° opposite to each other. As force is a vector quantity, the net force or total force acting on any object should be calculated by vector addition of number of forces along with their directions. So in this case, if we consider the force Ben is applying as F1 and the force Gary is applying as F2 on the trolley. Then the net or total force acting on the trolley will be $F1-F2$. This is because, F1 and F2 are acting opposite to each other in direction.Thus, $Total force acting on the trolley = 10 N - 5 N$.

So the total force acting on the trolley is 5 N and it is toward the north direction.