Question

A force is applied to an object at rest with a mass of 100 kg. The same force is applied to an object at rest with a mass of 1 kg. What differences in their motion would you observe? Explain your reasoning.

Answer 1

Answer: the object with less mas will move faster than the other object.

Explanation: Let's do a simplification of this case, I will only use newton's second law, this law says F = ma

where f is force, m is mass and a is acceleration.

Then, if in bot objects the force is the same, let's call it F, we have:

F = 100kg*a1

and

F = 1kg*a2

now let's isolate the accelerations:

a1 = F/100kg

a2 = F/1kg

here we can see that a2 is bigger than a1, this means that the object with less mass has a bigger acceleration, then the object with less mass will move faster than the object with more mass.

Answer 2

The object with a mass of 100 kg would move slower than the object with a mass of 1 kg. This is because a greater force is required to move the object with a mass of 100 kg compared to the object of 1 kg.