What effects do forces acting on an object which are not from the same pair have…

What effects do forces acting on an object which are not from the same pair have on one another? i.e. the force pulling the egg downward and the potential force of the table? Are they equal upon impact and there a pair?

Different forces acting on a single object are not official pairs; not the pairs associated with Newton’s third law of action-reaction. While it is possible for an object to experience two different forces that happen to be exactly equal in magnitude (amount) but opposite in direction, that doesn’t have to be the case. When an egg falls and hits a table, the egg’s downward weight and the table’s upward support force on the egg are equal in magnitude only for a fleeting instant during the collision. That’s because the table’s support force starts at zero while the egg is falling and then increases rapidly as the egg begins to push against the table’s surface. For just an instant the table pushes upward on the egg with a force equal in magnitude to the egg’s weight. But the upward support force continues to increase in strength and eventually pushes a hole in the egg’s bottom.

Leave a Reply