The Third Law of Motion shows up in collisions between objects. When two objects hit each other, they experience forces of the same magnitude but in opposite directions at impact. Those forces cause one object to speed up and the other to slow down. Even though the forces between the two objects are equal in magnitude, their accelerations are not.


Newton’s Second Law of Motion states that acceleration depends on force and mass, which means if you smack a ping pong ball with a bowling ball, one is going to have a higher acceleration than the other after the collision.


Golfers and baseball players use this principle to drive the ball far from their collision point by swinging the club or bat at high speeds, and even though the ball and bat experience the same force (in magnitude) at impact, the acceleration of the ball is much higher than the bat because the ball has a much lower mass. If you’re playing pool, then you can expect the billiard balls to experience the same accelerations after impact since the balls are all the same mass.


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