How does Newton’s third law of motion apply to an object (like a bullet) travelling into another object (like a concrete wall), breaking through it, and continuing to travel?

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How does Newton’s third law of motion apply to an object (like a bullet) travelling into another object (like a concrete wall), breaking through it, and continuing to travel?

In: Physics

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Even though the bullet keeps going, it still took the force of the interaction, the force was just not enough stop the bullet. The bullet does lose velocity, and takes on some deformation, just too little for us to see with the naked eye

Anonymous 0 Comments

The energy lost from the bullet turns into sound, heat, and the motion of the tiny pieces of wall that get blown out the other side with the bullet. Also an (invisible to the naked eye) impact wave will propagate throughout the wall (like ripples when a pebble is thrown into water). All of these things combined use up the energy that cause the bullet to slow down.