Question

Exercises 23 describe a situation. For each, identify all forces acting on the object and draw a free-body diagram of the object.

A cat is sitting on a window sill.

Short answer

Free body diagram is a pictorial representation of a body and different forces that acts on it.

Step-by-step solution

Given information:

The cat is sitting on a window sill.

Identifying the forces acting on the cat:

To identify the forces, following steps has to be taken:

• Identify the object which is the cat sitting on a window sill.
• Draw a picture for the cat.
• Draw a closed circle or curve around the object as shown by the dashed line in the figure below.
• Name and label the forces acting on the object . In this case, normal force is acting upward on the object and labeled as n.
• Label the long range forces which is force of gravity, F_G acting downward.
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Drawing the free body diagram of the given problem:

To draw the free body diagram, following steps has to be taken:

• Identify all the forces acting on the object.
• Draw the coordinate system.
• Use the particle model, represent the cat as a dot at the origin of the coordinate axis.
• Label the normal, n, vertically upwards and the force of gravity (gravitational force ) F_G downward.
• Label the net force that is drawn beside the diagram and not on the particle. It shows the direction of motion of the object. In this case, the net force is zero as the velocity of the cat is zero.
• The below diagram shows the free body diagram of the cat: