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John Denker wrote, in part:
"Saying
F causes ma (1)
is just as true (or just as false) as saying
ma causes F. (2)"
I continue to disagree. Forces can exist in the absence of
acceleration, but acceleration cannot exist in the absence of forces.
My approach is to deal with Newton's First Law as expressing the
causation--accelerations are caused by forces. [Try to accelerate something
without a force!]
It's not a matter of one permutation being more correct, which, of
course, is not true. It's a matter of asking if one of the permutations
will make more intuitive sense to the students, and therefore it might
be beneficial to start with that one. I may be fooling myself, but I
think I = V/R and a = F/m are the more intuitive permutations of these
equations.