Forces and Motion Group Discussion Questions

1. A grocery sack can withstand a maximum of 230 N before it rips. Will a bag holding 15 kg of
groceries that is lifted from the checkout counter hold?

Read p. 102 in the textbook about apparent weight and complete Example Problem 3 on p. 103. Then
complete #2 below.

2. You take a ride in a fast elevator to the top of a tall building and ride back down. During which
parts of the ride will your apparent and real weights be the same? During which parts will your
apparent weight be less than your real weight? More than your real weight?

3. Compare the force holding a 10.0-kg rock on Earth and on the Moon. The gravitational field on
the Moon is 1.6 N/kg.

4. You have a job at a meat warehouse loading inventory onto trucks for shipment to grocery
stores. Each truck has a weight limit of 10,000 N of cargo. You push each crate of meat along a
low resistance roller belt to a scale and weight it before moving it onto the truck. One night,
right after you weigh a 1000-N crate, the scale breaks. Describe a way in which you could apply
Newton’s laws to approximate the masses of the remaining crates.

5. You are working on a roof and have to load equipment in a bucket so that workers can hoist it to
the rooftop. If the rope is guaranteed not to break as long as the tension does not exceed 450 N,
and you fill the bucket until it has a mass of 42 kg, what is the greatest acceleration that the
workers can give the bucket as they pull it to the roof?

6. A rock is dropped from a bridge. Earth pulls on the rock and accelerates it downward. According
to Newton’s third law, the rock also pulls on Earth, but Earth does not seem to accelerate. Why
not?