You press down on the ground with a shovel — and simultaneously the ground presses on the shovel with the same force, only upward.
In practice: The reactive jet of gases in a rocket engine bursts downward — and the rocket rises upward; without this law, spaceflight would be impossible.
Newton's third law, also called the law of action and reaction, states: the forces of interaction between two bodies are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. It is important to understand that they are applied to different bodies, so they do not balance each other. Isaac Newton in the 'Principia' (1687) gave this principle a strict mathematical form, but empirically people always faced opposition: when rowing, the oar pushes the water backward, and the water pushes the boat forward.
How it works
A balloon, if inflated and released, flies around the room: the air rushes out of the opening in one direction, and the balloon itself is pushed in the other — this is reactive motion.
💡 If the third law suddenly turned off, you couldn't walk: your foot pushes off the ground, and the ground pushes you forward.
When one body presses on another, the second body presses back with the same force. These two forces are directed in opposite directions along the same line. Forces always arise in pairs: a hand pushes a wall — the wall pushes the hand.
How it works
A balloon, if inflated and released, flies around the room: the air rushes out of the opening in one direction, and the balloon itself is pushed in the other — this is reactive motion.
💡 Some marine animals, like squid, use Newton's third law for jet propulsion: they forcefully eject a jet of water — and receive a push forward, reaching speeds up to 40 km/h.
Newton's third law states: for every action force there is an equal in magnitude and oppositely directed reaction force. Formally: if body A acts on body B with force F_AB, then body B simultaneously acts on body A with force F_BA = -F_AB. This law underlies the conservation laws of momentum and energy. In modern physics, it follows from deeper symmetries: from the homogeneity of space (Noether's theorem).
Discovery
The principle of opposition was discussed even by ancient mechanics, but it was systematically studied by Isaac Newton based on experiments and observations. He verified the law in collisions of pendulums (with Christiaan Huygens) and in planetary motion. Newton realized that the Sun and planets mutually attract: if the Sun attracts the Earth, then the Earth pulls the Sun with the same force, but due to the huge mass the reaction is unnoticeable. Later the law was confirmed in all conceivable interactions.
How it works
It is applied in jet engines, walking, swimming, in calculating impacts and contact stresses. In rocketry, the third law explains thrust: the ejection of mass at high speed produces an equal force impulse, pushing the rocket forward. The limits of applicability are classical: in electrodynamics with retarded potentials, the third law in the simple form for instantaneous forces is violated; accounting for field momentum is required.
Caveats
In electromagnetic interactions with radiation, the action force is not always instantly balanced by the reaction on the particle; momentum is carried away by the electromagnetic field.; At relativistic speeds, forces depend on the reference frame, but the total momentum balance is conserved.
\vec{F}_{12} = -\vec{F}_{21}
F12 is the force with which body 1 acts on body 2; F21 is the force of body 2 on body 1; the minus sign means opposite direction.
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