Originally Posted By: paul
did you read the question.
it ask what is the amount of force.
not what is the amount of momentum.
or what is the impulse force.

I understand the question. But what TFF said recently is probably the best way to go. We should give up until you can do the basic operations that are needed to analyse this.

In the case of your question, you can simply apply the formula

F=ma

That's all, just substitute mass and acceleration to find the force. This equation is true for 1s, or 50s. If you disagree with that (Newton's 2nd law) then that's a whole different topic.

There is no such thing as what you're using:

F=mat

That equation is automatically wrong because it is dimensionally inconsistent.



Quote:

and if 80N is all the force you can apply to the 100 kg mass
then after that 1 second you would no longer be accelerating the mass because you already used the force that you had.

After that 1s, I'm still applying the same 80N force, continuously for all the seconds up to 50.

I can clearly see you're trying to find a "cumulative force" or the integral of force over time. That's fine, and it's a useful quantity, but it's not a force itself. Not being a force means you can't use units of N, and you can't use that number in any equations that require force.

It's a bit like saying "oh it's 20degrees today". "If I stand outside for 5 minutes I'll experience a temperature of 20 degrees * 300s = 6000degrees, It'll be as hot as the surface of the sun!"

Last edited by kallog; 09/30/11 04:44 AM.