I know that when objects are connected and a force is exerted on the connected objects, we treat them as a system with a single acceleration.
I was just wondering if objects were piled on top of each other they would still be connected. if a horizontal force was exerted on one of the objects, would it apply to the entire system?
When objects are piled on top of each other, they can still be considered connected if they have some form of interaction between them, such as friction or other forces. In this scenario, if a horizontal force is exerted on one of the objects, it would indeed apply to the entire system.
To understand why this happens, we can look at the concept of the normal force. When objects are stacked, the weight (force due to gravity) of each object above creates a normal force on the object below it. The normal forces essentially provide the interlocking and interacting forces between objects in the stack.
When an external horizontal force is applied to one of the objects, this force gets transmitted through the normal forces to the other objects in the system. This interaction allows the force to be shared among the objects in the stack, resulting in a system-wide acceleration.
To calculate the acceleration of the entire system, you would need to consider the individual masses of the objects and the net external force applied. By applying Newton's second law (F = ma), you can determine the acceleration of the system as a whole.
In summary, objects piled on top of each other can still be considered connected if they have interacting forces. When a horizontal force is exerted on one object in the stack, it applies to the entire system due to the transmission of forces through the normal forces between the objects.