A student wanted to investigate changing the mass of a cart that you can push. The student pushed both carts with a force of 200 Newtons. If one cart has a mass of 100kg and the other cart a mass of 50kg, what results would the student expect to see as far as how fast each cart moved in comparison with one another?

Answer 1

According to Newton's second law of motion, the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force applied on it and inversely proportional to its mass. Therefore, when the student pushed both carts with a force of 200 Newtons, the acceleration of each cart will depend on their respective masses.

Using the equation for acceleration (a = F/m), where F is the force applied and m is the mass, we can calculate the acceleration of each cart:

For the cart with a mass of 100kg:
Acceleration = Force / Mass = 200 N / 100 kg = 2 m/s²

For the cart with a mass of 50kg:
Acceleration = Force / Mass = 200 N / 50 kg = 4 m/s²

Thus, the cart with a mass of 100kg would have an acceleration of 2 m/s², while the cart with a mass of 50kg would have an acceleration of 4 m/s².

Since acceleration is a measure of how quickly an object changes its velocity, the cart with a mass of 50kg would move faster than the cart with a mass of 100kg.