A boy pulls his little brother in a little red wagon. He keeps the handle horizontal to the ground. His little brother and the wagon weigh 40 kg. How much tension will the boy have to place on the wagon's handle to get it moving from a standstill?

Question

A boy pulls his little brother in a little red wagon. He keeps the handle horizontal to the ground. His little brother and the wagon weigh 40 kg. How much tension will the boy have to place on the wagon's handle to get it moving from a standstill?

Answer 1

To find out how much tension the boy needs to apply to the wagon's handle to get it moving from a standstill, we can use Newton's second law of motion, which states that the force applied to an object is equal to the mass of the object multiplied by its acceleration.

First, we need to determine the force required to accelerate the wagon and the little brother. Let's assume the wagon's acceleration is a.

The total mass of the wagon and the little brother is given as 40 kg. Since no other forces are mentioned in the question, we can assume that the only force acting on the wagon is the tension in the handle.

So the equation becomes:

Force = mass * acceleration

Force = 40 kg * a

Now we need the value of acceleration to calculate the force. However, we don't have the acceleration mentioned in the question. We need additional information to provide a specific answer.