NEWTON’S FIRST LAWBy: Cheyanne, HannaH, Alex, MaryAnn, Katrina, and Nik.

Aristotle on Motion

Aristotle came up with two ideas of motion, natural motion and violent motion.

He thought natural motion was any type of motion that was straight up or straight down. Ex: A boulder falling from a cliff.

Violent motion was any motion that needed a force. Ex: A cart being pulled by a horse

Galileo and Copernicus

Copernicus was the first scientist to state that the earth traveled around the sun.

Galileo was the first scientist to show that Copernicus’ idea was logical, by proving this he found that a force was needed to keep an object moving, due to friction.

Galileo stated that if friction were completely absent there would be no force needed for movement.

Law of Inertia

This law is a restatement of Galileo’s idea.

The law states that a body at rest stays at rest, while a body in motion stays in motion.

An example of this law would be a stapler sitting on a desk. The stapler stays at rest until a force is put upon it, such as a teacher pushing it off to the side.

Vocabulary

Inertia: The resistance of any material object to change in its state of motion.

Force: Any push or pull Friction: the force that acts to resist the

relative motion of objects or materials that are in contact

Mass: the amount of material present in an object

Kilograms: the measurement of mass Weight: the force due to gravity upon a

body

Citations

Hewitt, P. (n.d.). Newton's First law of Motion. In Conceptual Physics- A High School Physics Program (pp. 25-36).