Saturday, October 24, 2009

The Physics of a Crushed Box



We were in the middle of moving in to our house in Manila when we were granted the opportunity to come to Hawaii (2003) instead. We visited our house in 2007 during our Christmas vacation and I snapped a picture of these unpacked boxes inside what would otherwise have been my bedroom.

The crushed boxes reminded me of the concepts we learned about forces. As illustrated by the disfigured bottom box, the top box is obviously heavier than the box at the bottom. If they were of equal weight, both boxes would be in perfect conditions. However, as the picture exhibits, the weight of the top box is greater than the bottom box's weight and therefore the excess force (weight) is visible through the crushed bottom box.

Furthermore, the top box is also tilted at an angle towards the wall. According to Newton's third law, which states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the force exerted by the box is equal and opposite to the force the wall exerts on the box. Since the force is tilted at an angle, the force it actually applies on the wall is a component of the force (adjacent / cosine theta). Neither the box nor the wall is moving and the forces exerted are towards the opposite directions; therefore, the forces are equal and opposite to each other, which conforms to Newton's third law.

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