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What is force?

Highlighted from a real textbook passage. Explained by Clicked.

Used in a sentence

University Course Reader · STEM

The net force on the carriage determines its acceleration, not its speed.

The reader highlighted one word in a textbook passage. Clicked broke down the concept “force” into plain English:

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Overview

Force is a push or a pull that one object applies to another. Several usually act on the same thing at once. They point in different directions and offset each other, sometimes completely. Whatever is left over is called the net force. Only that leftover changes anything, which is why a thing can have plenty of force on it and still not move.
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Overview

Force is any push or pull one thing puts on another. Usually a few run at once, pointing wherever they like, so they cancel each other out, sometimes right down to nothing. Whatever is left standing is the only bit that does anything, which is why something can be under enormous force and go absolutely nowhere. 😎

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Detail

Force is a push or a pull that one object applies to another. Your hand does it, gravity does it, so does the road under a tyre. Forces rarely act alone, and direction decides what happens when they meet: two pushing opposite ways subtract from each other, two pushing the same way add up. Whatever is left over is the net force. That leftover is the only part that moves anything. A book on a table has gravity pulling it down and the table pushing back just as hard, so nothing is left over and the book sits still. Newton's second law puts numbers on it: acceleration is net force divided by mass. So one push sends an office chair rolling and barely shifts a filing cabinet, because the leftover is the same and the mass is not.
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Detail

A force is one object pushing or pulling another. A hand does it, a rope does it, so does the floor under your feet. They almost never turn up alone. Hold a shopping bag by the handle and it just hangs there. Gravity is dragging it down the whole time, your hand is pulling up by exactly as much, and the two knock each other out. Whatever survives the cancelling is the bit that matters. How far that gets you depends on how heavy the thing is. One shove launches a skateboard across the room. The identical shove leaves a fridge unmoved and your shoulder faintly insulted. Same shove, same leftover, very different mass. 😎

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Analogy

Force works like two people pushing a stalled car. Push from the same end and their efforts add up, so the car moves off faster than either of them could manage alone. Put one at the front instead and the efforts subtract, so the car sits there while both of them strain. The car responds only to what is left once the two pushes are added together.
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Analogy

Arm wrestling is two forces going head to head. Both people push with absolutely everything they have, and for a while nothing moves at all. Two red faces, zero movement, enormous effort on both sides. The hands only start travelling once one person out-pushes the other, and the harder they out-push them, the faster the trip to the table. 😎
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AI explanations may contain errors · Not professional advice

Formal definition — The same term, explained the usual way

Force is a vector quantity representing an interaction in which one body acts upon another, measured in newtons. Because forces are vectors they sum, and it is the resultant, or net force, that governs a body's acceleration according to Newton's second law, expressed as F = ma. Where the vector sum is zero the body's velocity is unchanged, whether that velocity is zero or not.

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