This is a p5.js sketch showing the sum of forces as a resultant vector. Find the page here: https://bibeklalkarn.github.io/vectorSum/ Today marks the birth of Sir Isaac Newton, one of the most brilliant humans ever to walk the Earth. His ideas and theories have been the basis of physics for centuries. Most of us have heard about the discovery of gravity by Newton, but here is the complete list of things he single-handedly discovered or invented or is named after in mathematics and physics.
One of them is Newton's laws of motion. I believe the second law of motion is the most important and the other two laws can be easily derived from it. It explains how the forces applied to an object translate to its motion. It connects the acceleration of the body to the sum of forces applied on that object, called resulting (or resultant) force. It says more resultant force results in producing more acceleration if the mass is not changing. This "resultant force" can be quite mysterious to understand for non-physics students as sometimes even though multiple forces are applied to a body the resultant force is zero. To better understand the meaning of this "resultant force", I have created a script in p5.js. I encourage everyone to give this a try as it can prove to be quite an intuitive way to understand the resultant force. Just click on the link and then a blank screen with a dot in the center will appear. Click anywhere on the screen it will create a vector(force) from the center of the screen to that point and then click again to create another vector, another vector which is the sum of two vectors you created will also appear. Try quizzing yourself to find a point that will create a vector to make the resultant zero. If you did not quite find that point, try again. After you make the resultant zero, notice the complexity of the vectors producing it. If you manage to get zero, comment a screenshot here.😉