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Non-contact force. A non-contact force is a force which acts on an object without coming physically in contact with it. [1] The most familiar non-contact force is gravity, which confers weight. [1] In contrast, a contact force is a force which acts on an object coming physically in contact with it. [1]
Contact forces are often decomposed into orthogonal components, one perpendicular to the surface(s) in contact called the normal force, and one parallel to the surface(s) in contact, called the friction force. [1] Not all forces are contact forces; for example, the weight of an object is the force between the object and the Earth, even though ...
Force field (physics) Plot of a two-dimensional slice of the gravitational potential in and around a uniform spherical body. The inflection points of the cross-section are at the surface of the body. In physics, a force field is a vector field corresponding with a non-contact force acting on a particle at various positions in space ...
Action at a distance. Action at a distance is the concept in physics that an object's motion can be affected by another object without the two being in physical contact; that is, it is the concept of the non-local interaction of objects that are separated in space. Coulomb's law and Newton's law of universal gravitation are based on action at a ...
A force is an influence that can cause an object to change its velocity unless counterbalanced by other forces. The concept of force makes the everyday notion of pushing or pulling mathematically precise. Because the magnitude and direction of a force are both important, force is a vector quantity.
The classical theory of contact focused primarily on non-adhesive contact where no tension force is allowed to occur within the contact area, i.e., contacting bodies can be separated without adhesion forces. Several analytical and numerical approaches have been used to solve contact problems that satisfy the no-adhesion condition.
Reaction (physics) As described by the third of Newton's laws of motion of classical mechanics, all forces occur in pairs such that if one object exerts a force on another object, then the second object exerts an equal and opposite reaction force on the first. [1][2] The third law is also more generally stated as: "To every action there is ...
Newton's laws of motion are three physical laws that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws, which provide the basis for Newtonian mechanics, can be paraphrased as follows: A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by ...