Understanding Newton's First Law of Motion through Star Trek

launching activation sequence on three two one

sir kirk is headed for collision at 0.432 captain there is debris directly ahead

good morning today you just saw a scene from star trek into darkness and i want to explain how this scene

illustrates one of newton's laws in fact it illustrates newton's first law the law of inertia an

object at rest will stay at rest and an object moving in a straight line with a constant speed in other words constant

velocity will remain moving in a straight line with a constant speed the velocity will not change unless

acted upon by an externally unbalanced force now i really want to focus on the second part

of this particular law an object moving a straight line with a constant speed will remain moving in a straight line

with a constant speed and so at the very beginning of the jump the two characters

were traveling in more or less a straight line in fact they were traveling

in a straight line but what happened well they encountered some debris

and so they had to take some action to avoid hitting that debris how did they take that action

well this is the part of the law i want to explore they will remain moving in a straight

line unless acted upon by an externally unbalanced force so they had to apply

a force a force is just a push or a pull the unbalanced force that was applied was thrust

the moment they activated that feature in their suit it caused a change in direction and you

can see the propellant there in the image now i also want to explore this law

for this example notice we have a character on top of the train and the character does not have a seat

belt on let's see what happens when this train hits an

object let's see what happens to the character let's play that frame by frame

here comes the character and the train the train is going to hit a series of books and let's see what

happens to the character whoa the character does a flip and then slides to a stop

you'll notice that the character continued moving an object in motion will stay

in motion the character only came to a stop when another force brought him to stop

that force was friction between the character and the book that's the force that brought him to a

stop but at the impact at the moment of impact the character continued moving in a

straight line let's watch that again here comes the character and

and and continues moving in a straight line just like newton's first law said he

would so i hope you enjoyed today's mini explanation of newton's first law have a

great day bye