Homework Help Forum: physics

Posted by billy on Monday, November 2, 2009 at 8:50pm.

a child causes a wagon to accelerate by pulling it with a horizontal force. newton's third law says that the wagon exerts an equal and opposite force on the child. how can the wagon accelerate? (hint: draw a free-body diagram for each object.)

• physics - bobpursley, Monday, November 2, 2009 at 9:16pm

  The wagon is indeed pulling on the child. However, the wagons pull is caused by the inertia of the wagon itself, and the forcepulling back on the child is equal to masswagon*acceleration.

  
  

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