Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Universl Law of Gravity & Newton's Third Law of Motion (by Wen #1)

Hey guys, I came across the following problem while reading about Newton: Accroding to Newton's third law of motion, when two objects collide, each object will feel the same and opposite force equal to the total amount of force created by the collision. Now consider this: two astronauts, both weighing 90kg, are afloat in space (vaccum). They're close to each other (lets say 5m). But will they eventually float towards eachother due to gravity? My thought is this: since there are no net force in either direction, because both astronauts weigh 90kg, the two astronauts will stay stationary. According to Newton's third law of motion, with whatever force the astronauts are pulling eachother in towards the center spot between both of them, there exists the same amount of force that separates them. So do and will astronauts move at all if all the conditions stay consistent. NOTE: Granted that they're in a total vaccum, in which nothing else exist besides those two astronauts.

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