• usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    That’s because of friction and air resistance which are still forces. Repeat the same experiment in outer space where there’s no atmosphere or stuff in the way and you won’t see that

    There’s even things like ion engines that take advantage of that by producing tiny amounts of thrust but run over long amounts of time to build up quite a bit of speed

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

    • redballooon
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      1 year ago

      Having taken not only Highschool physics but also university physics courses I know that.

      That doesn’t change that for most people in most environments the sentence “if an object isn’t pushed it’ll stop” is, in fact, true.

      It becomes false only if you change the context, but I would argue, if you know all the facts and scenarios, that’s willful misunderstanding.

      • Sethayy@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Ngl saying it isnt pushed vs isnt acted on by a force are entirely difference scenarios, a push is a subset of forces (as im sure you know with your uni courses right ;)

        Else newtons laws would be incorrect on a macro scale, which to say at the least would be… concerning