Once we’ve determined the mass of the objects in the collision, we can determine the
force they’ve applied to each other. As the force causes the object to accelerate, we can
measure this acceleration. We can then substitute this value into the following equation to
determine an exact value of the force we’ve applied:
mass × acceleration = force
Determining Weight
The force of gravity from the earth acting on an object with mass m is expressed as follows:
uF = mg
In this equation, g is the magnitude of gravitational acceleration—about 9.8 m/s
2
when
measured near the ground surface. This relationship is derived f
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