The Physics of a Brother's Leverage

These photographs show Max, my sister's gargantuan stuffed dog, sliding down the slide in our backyard. My brother was using my sister's stuffed toy as a "leverage" to get my sister to do what he wanted.

As I was watching my brother annoy my sister, I made a connection between the situation and the concepts that I learned in the chapter of Newton's Laws and Forces. The forces acting on the dog on the slide involve the x-component of the dog's weight, the force from my brother's push, the friction between the dog and the slide, the normal force, and the y-component of the dog's weight. Since the dog does not accelerate in the y-direction, the y-component of the dog's weight and the normal force must be equivalent. However, since the dog accelerates in the horizontal (x) direction, the net force is the dog's weight's x-component plus the force of my brother's push minus the friction. In addition, after reading about energy from the chapter that we're currently studying, when the dog is perched at the top of the slide, it illustrates potential energy, energy stored within a system due to its position. When the dog moves down the slide, potential energy turns into kinetic energy, which is the energy of motion.