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What's wrong with the notion of action/reaction? By using concretePaul J. Camp "The Beauty of the Universe
examples to help the student experience Newton's 3rd Law, it seems quite
natural to describe these as action/reaction, and, consequently, we find
that forces aways occur in pairs.
Now get them to explain it to you and kill that action/reaction
thing in the egg. To me, Newton's laws are nothing more than an
operational definition of the word "force." The first two laws tell
you what a force does -- causes an acceleration -- and the third law
tells you that really there are no forces. There are _interactions_
between particles and every interaction necessarily involves a _pair_
of forces -- each particle interacts with the other one. It is just a
way of saying that in an interaction, neither particle is priviledged
in any way.
Paul J. Camp
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TK McCarthy Email:mcca6300@spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov