Two teams are playing tug of war. They are both exerting equal force on the rope in opposite directions. This balanced force results in no change of motion.
A soccer ball is sitting at rest. It takes an unbalanced force of a kick to change its motion.
Newton’s First Law is also called the Law of Inertia
Inertia: the tendency of an object to resist changes in its state of motion
The First Law states that all objects have inertia. The more mass an object has, the more inertia it has (and the harder it is to change its motion).
More Examples from Real Life
A powerful locomotive begins to pull a long line of boxcars that were sitting at rest. Since the boxcars are so massive, they have a great deal of inertia and it takes a large force to change their motion. Once they are moving, it takes a large force to stop them.
On your way to school, a bug flies into your windshield. Since the bug is so small, it has very little inertia and exerts a very small force on your car (so small that you don’t even feel it).
If objects in motion tend to stay in motion, why don’t moving objects keep moving forever?
Things don’t keep moving forever because there’s almost always an unbalanced force acting upon it.
A book sliding across a table slows down and stops because of the force of friction.
If you throw a ball upwards it will eventually slow down and fall because of the force of gravity.
In outer space, away from gravity and any sources of friction, a rocket ship launched with a certain speed and direction would keep going in that same direction and at that same speed forever.
Newton’s Second Law
Force equals mass times acceleration.
F = ma
Acceleration: a measurement of how quickly an object is changing speed.
