Question

Exercises 24 describe a situation. Identify all forces acting on the object and draw a free-body diagram of the object.

An ice hockey puck glides across frictionless ice.

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:

An ice hockey puck glides across frictionless ice.

Identifying the forces acting on the puck:

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

• Identify the object which is the ice hockey puck gliding over the ice.
• Draw a picture for the puck.
• 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 due to the frictionless ground and labeled as n.
• Label the long range forces which is force of gravity, F_G acting downward.
• Assume that there is no friction between the puck and ice which means the velocity of the puck is constant.

Drawing the free body diagram of the puck:

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 puck 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 acceleration of the puck is zero.
• The below diagram shows the free body diagram of the puck.
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