Newton's Second Law

“Write down Newton's second law.”

This SWBQ follows up on the Survivor in Space activity and is used as a segue into generalizing Newtons's second law to systems of many particles.

Collect several student responses. Many students will respond with an introductory form $$F = m a$$ but be sure to collect boards that remind students that Newton's second law is an equality between vector quantities. If no students bring up the second-derivative nature of the acceleration [! more].

This SWBQ is intended to connect directly to a derivation of reduced mass.

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