- #1
Jasongreat
First for the disclaimer I am not a student,I am just a layman so this is NOT a school homework question however I am at home and I am working on a thought problem.
If two equal but opposing forces affect the same object, they cancel each other out, right? Do they cancel each other as they affect the object, or do both affect the object equally and therefore cancel themselves out? If they do affect the object and then cancel out, would that count as a force on the object even though it would be zero? Say for example if you could apply centripetal force to a vessel which had a molecule inside, the molecule which isn't attached to the vessel would move out until it came in contact with the vessel wall(i guess that would actually be losing its centripetal force until contacting the wall), but if you added an opposing centripetal force that was exactly opposite of the first, would the molecule return to the center(not dead center but somewhere on the center plane(xy))? If so, I guess if you could do this along the x,y,z axis' the molecule would be contained in a cube in the center, and if you could do this in an infinite number of axis' you would have a sphere in the center? Or am I just trying to overthink this? Thanks in advance for any help.
If two equal but opposing forces affect the same object, they cancel each other out, right? Do they cancel each other as they affect the object, or do both affect the object equally and therefore cancel themselves out? If they do affect the object and then cancel out, would that count as a force on the object even though it would be zero? Say for example if you could apply centripetal force to a vessel which had a molecule inside, the molecule which isn't attached to the vessel would move out until it came in contact with the vessel wall(i guess that would actually be losing its centripetal force until contacting the wall), but if you added an opposing centripetal force that was exactly opposite of the first, would the molecule return to the center(not dead center but somewhere on the center plane(xy))? If so, I guess if you could do this along the x,y,z axis' the molecule would be contained in a cube in the center, and if you could do this in an infinite number of axis' you would have a sphere in the center? Or am I just trying to overthink this? Thanks in advance for any help.