Fast and Furious: Off To The Races - Investigating Force and Motion

Acceleration is caused by an unbalanced force and causes an object to move faster or slower. Since acceleration is a vector quantity, the acceleration can produce a change in direction with no change in speed.
Efficiency is the comparison of useful work output to work input in any system.
Energy is the ability of a physical system to do work. The amount of work that can be done depends on the amount of energy available in the system and the efficiency of the system.
Force is a push or pull that causes motion or a change in speed and direction.
- Force that is directed radially towards the center is the centripetal force. In all circular motion, there must be a centripetal force.
Friction - The force that opposes or slows the motion between two surfaces in contact with one another. There are two kinds of friction:
- When a body rests against a surface a force F attempts to slide the body along the surface. If the body does not move, then there is a static frictional force 'fs'.
- Kinetic frictional force is that which opposes the motion of a sliding object.
Inertia - The property that causes all matter that is moving to stay in motion and all matter that is not moving to stay at rest until acted on by an outside force.
Work is the transfer of energy from one system to another. Work is done when a force moves an object over a certain distance. Mathematically, it is the product of a force and the distance through which the force moves or the formula may be expressed as: W = f x d.