Interactive · 1 question
Newton's Third Law has been, over the multitude of years, been stated in many ways. The shortest way we know it today is:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Some websites state it as follows:
When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body.
One from of the original formulation, translated to English, states:
To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.
All of these are trying to communicate that there is always an action-reaction pair of forces. Continue below for examples.
The standard example is walking. When we use our feet to push the floor, if there was no reaction force, our feet would just plunge through the floor. In fact, this is why we can stand on the Earth! A person's gravitational force (i.e. weight) applies a force on the ground and a normal force is applied by the ground to the person.
Here's a thought question for you. A donkey has been told to move a box using a rope. The donkey refuses. He claims that when he exerts a forward force on the rope, the rope exerts an equal and opposite force backward. Thus, he can never get the box to start moving. Is the donkey right? (Source: IPhOO)
He can clearly pull the box with a rope like we always do. The trouble is the following. The donkey forgot that the two forces that he took into consideration are acting on different objects. The forward force is exerted on the sled, whereas the backward force is exerted on the donkey. Thus, the box could accelerate and we would have to use Newton's Second Law on the box to compute the acceleration of the box.

