Introduction

Newton's laws of motion are three basic laws of classical mechanics

that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and
the forces acting on it. These laws can be paraphrased as follows:

 A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a

straight line, unless acted upon by a force.
 When a body is acted upon by a net force, the body's
acceleration multiplied by its mass is equal to the net force.
 If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the
same magnitude but opposite directions.
The three laws of motion were first stated by Isaac Newton in his
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy), originally published in 1687.
Newton used them to investigate and explain the motion of many
physical objects and systems, which laid the foundation for classical
mechanics. In the time since Newton, the conceptual content of
classical physics has been reformulated in alternative ways, involving
different mathematical approaches that have yielded insights which
were obscured in the original, Newtonian formulation. Limitations to
Newton's laws have also been discovered; new theories are
necessary when objects move at very high speeds (special relativity),
are very massive (general relativity), or are very small (quantum
mechanics). Newton's laws are often stated in terms of point or
particle masses, that is, bodies whose volume is negligible. This is a
reasonable approximation for real bodies when the motion of
internal parts can be neglected, and when the separation between
bodies is much larger than the size of each. For instance, the Earth
and the Sun can both be approximated as pointlike when considering
the orbit of the former around the latter, but the Earth is not pointlike
when considering activities on its surface. The mathematical
description of motion, or kinematics, is based on the idea of
specifying positions using numerical coordinates. Movement is
represented by these numbers changing over time: a body's
trajectory is represented by a function that assigns to each value of a
time variable the values of all the position coordinates. The simplest
case is one-dimensional, that is, when a body is constrained to move
only along a straight line. Its position can then be given by a single
number, indicating where it is relative to some chosen reference
point. The physics concept of force makes quantitative the everyday
idea of a push or a pull. Forces in Newtonian mechanics are often due
to strings and ropes, friction, muscle effort, gravity, and so forth. Like
displacement, velocity, and acceleration, force is a vector quantity.
Newton’s first law
Translated from Latin, Newton's first law reads,

“Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a

straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces
impressed upon it.”
The modern understanding of Newton's first law is that no inertial
observer is privileged over any other. The concept of an inertial
observer makes quantitative the everyday idea of feeling no effects of
motion. For example, a person standing on the ground watching a
train go past is an inertial observer. If the observer on the ground
sees the train moving smoothly in a straight line at a constant speed,
then a passenger sitting on the train will also be an inertial observer:
the train passenger feels no motion. The principle expressed by
Newton's first law is that there is no way to say which inertial
observer is "really" moving and which is "really" standing still. One
observer's state of rest is another observer's state of uniform motion
in a straight line, and no experiment can deem either point of view to
be correct or incorrect. There is no absolute standard of rest.
Newton’s second
law
“The change of motion of an object is proportional to the force
impressed; and is made in the direction of the straight line in which
the force is impressed.”
By "motion", Newton meant the quantity now called momentum,
which depends upon the amount of matter contained in a body, the
speed at which that body is moving, and the direction in which it is
moving. In modern notation, the momentum of a body is the product
of its mass and its velocity:
⃗p=m ⃗v

Newton's second law, in modern form, states that the time derivative
of the momentum is the force:
⃗ d ⃗p
F=
dt

If the mass m does not change with time, then the derivative acts
only upon the velocity, and so the force equals the product of the
mass and the time derivative of the velocity, which is the
acceleration:
⃗ d ⃗v
F =m =m ⃗a
dt

As the acceleration is the second derivative of position with respect

to time, this can also be written;
2
⃗ d ⃗s
F =m 2
dt
Newton's third law
“To every action, there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the
mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal,
and directed to contrary parts.”
The statement means that in every interaction, there is a pair of
forces acting on the two interacting objects. The size of the forces on
the first object equals the size of the force on the second object. The
direction of the force on the first object is opposite to the direction of
the force on the second object. Forces always come in pairs - equal
and opposite action-reaction force pairs.
Consider the flying motion of birds. A bird flies by use of its wings.
The wings of a bird push air downwards. Since forces result from
mutual interactions, the air must also be pushing the bird upwards.
The size of the force on the air equals the size of the force on the bird;
the direction of the force on the air (downwards) is opposite the
direction of the force on the bird (upwards). For every action, there is
an equal (in size) and opposite (in direction) reaction. Action-reaction
force pairs make it possible for birds to fly. Similarly, Consider the
propulsion of a fish through the water. A fish uses its fins to push
water backwards. But a push on the water will only serve to
accelerate the water. Since forces result from mutual interactions, the
water must also be pushing the fish forwards, propelling the fish
through the water. The size of the force on the water equals the size
of the force on the fish; the direction of the force on the water
(backwards) is opposite the direction of the force on the fish
(forwards). For every action, there is an equal (in size) and opposite
(in direction) reaction force. Action-reaction force pairs make it
possible for fish to swim.
Rotational
analogues of
Newton’s law
When Newton's laws are applied to rotating extended bodies, they
lead to new quantities that are analogous to those invoked in the
original laws. The analogue of mass is the moment of inertia, the
counterpart of momentum is angular momentum, and the
counterpart of force is torque.
Angular momentum is calculated with respect to a reference
point.] If the displacement vector from a reference point to a body
is and the body has momentum , then the body's angular
momentum with respect to that point is, using the vector cross
product,
⃗
L=⃗r × ⃗p

Taking the time derivative of the angular momentum gives,

d⃗
dt
= ( )
L d ⃗p
dt
× ⃗p + ⃗r ×
d ⃗p
dt
= ⃗v × m ⃗v + ⃗r × ⃗
F

The first term vanishes because ⃗v and m ⃗v point in the same direction.
The remaining term is the torque,
τ⃗ =⃗r × ⃗
F

When the torque is zero, the angular momentum is constant, just as

when the force is zero, the momentum is constant. The torque can
vanish even when the force is non-zero, if the body is located at the
reference point (r⃗ =0) or if the force ⃗F and the displacement vector r⃗
are directed along the same line.
The angular momentum of a collection of point masses, and thus of
an extended body, is found by adding the contributions from each of
the points. This provides a means to characterize a body's rotation
about an axis, by adding up the angular momenta of its individual
pieces. The result depends on the chosen axis, the shape of the body,
and the rate of rotation
Examples