Exploring Forces
What a force can do
Find out all the things a force can do to an object.
We push and pull things all day without noticing. Activity 5.2 asks you to list such moments, and to say what the force actually did each time.
| Action | Push or pull? | What the force did |
|---|---|---|
| a friend holds your moving bicycle from behind | pull | stopped it, or slowed it down |
| a bat hits a moving ball | push | changed the ball's direction |
| pressing a blown-up balloon | push | changed the balloon's shape |
Try more of your own: opening a drawer, stretching a rubber band, a fielder stopping a ball, kicking a football, braking a bicycle, rolling a chapati, turning the handle of an autorickshaw. Even catching a falling ball is a force: without your hand pushing up on it, it would slip through your fingers.
Put them together. A force can:
- make an object move from rest;
- change the speed of a moving object (faster or slower);
- change the direction it is moving in;
- change its shape (press your own cheeks and see);
- or do several of these at once.
And the reverse is just as true: none of these changes happens without a force. Whenever speed, direction or shape changes, some force is acting.
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