Question

If you know all of the forces acting on a moving object, can you tell in which direction the object is moving? if the answer is yes, explain how. If the answer is no, give an example.

Answer 1

No, knowing all the forces is not enough to know the direction of motion.

How to use Newton's laws?

The second Newton's law states that:

F = m*a

This says "force equals mass times acceleration".

Where acceleration is the rate of change of the speed. From that equation, we conclude that the acceleration is in the same direction that the net force.

So, if we know all the forces acting on an object, we know the net force acting on it, then we know the direction of the acceleration.

Is this enough to know the direction in which it is moving?

No, the object does not need to move in the same direction than its acceleration, the direction of motion will also depend on the initial velocity of the object (if it is initially moving with constant speed).

If we don't know that, we can't find the direction of motion.

An example of this can be a car going at 100km/h east-wise.

Then we apply a net force due west, then we have an acceleration due west. But as the initial direction of motion was east, the car will still move to the east, but the velocity will decrease gradually.

So as you can see in that example, we need to know the initial velocity to know the direction in which the object is moving.

If you want to know more about acceleration, you can read:

brainly.com/question/605631