Question

Exercises 25 describe a situation. Identify all forces acting on the object and draw a free-body diagram of the object.

Your physics textbook is sliding across the table.

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 physics textbook is sliding across the table.

Identifying the forces acting on the textbook:

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

• Identify the object which is the textbook is sliding over the table.
• Draw a picture for the book.
• 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 table and labeled as n and kinetic friction , f_k, is acting opposite to the direction of the textbook sliding, towards left.
• 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 textbook:

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 textbook as a dot at the origin of the coordinate axis.
• Label the normal, n, vertically upwards, kinetic friction ,f_k ,acting opposite toe the direction of sliding towards left 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 towards left as shown in the below diagram.
• The below diagram shows the free body diagram of the textbook:
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