Second Law Cart

A cart laden with books has a fairly large amount of inertia. However, if I exert a force on it, it will gradually accelerate, and once it starts going, it will take an opposing force to stop it.

The acceleration of the cart can be qualitatively determined by the time it takes for it to travel some distance.

Unfortunately I don't have enough carts or rolling chairs for everyone to do this in groups; however, we can have volunteers pull a single cart back and forth at the front of the room. A rope with a spring scale on it allows each volunteer to determine how much force exactly they are exerting on the cart. This also makes it possible to exert forces in several directions and determine the net force.

We can also experiment with changing the number of books on the cart, hence changing the mass. We should still find the same results for when the forces are balanced, but when they are unbalanced the acceleration will be different for different masses.