Question

When Jane drives to work, she always places her purse on the passenger’s seat. By the time she gets to work, her purse has fallen on the floor in front of the passenger seat. One day, she asks you to explain why this happens in terms of physics. What do you say?

Answer 1

Explanation: There may be different explanations:

Suppose that Jane's car has a built some sped, and she sees a stoplight. Now she needs to stop the car (decelerating the car)

When she does this, she creates a force that holds the car until it is full stop, but this force is applied only on the car, the purse that is on the passenger seat only feels this force by the friction that the seat does in his surface, but the purse has built some moment because it was inside the car, and the friction force that the seat does may not be enough to also stop the purse. So when Jane stops, the purse keeps moving forward, and then it falls down of the seat.

Answer 2

At some time during her drive she backed up with a substantial negative. ( backwards) acceleration. Since the pocket book is not physically connected to the seat it is free to move. Upon rapid negative acceleration the pocket book remains in its position while the car accelerates backwards away from it. this demonstrates Newtons 1st law of motion. The first law is the law of inertia. Which states, an object at rest. ( pocketbook) will remain at rest and an object in motion will continue in motion at constant velocity, unless acted upon by some outside force to change its motion.