Question

Explain your opinion of the following statement. Give an example to support your opinion. "Newton's laws are a good approximation to help understand sports, but the human body and real world objects are more complicated, so Newton's laws don't hold precisely."

Answer 1

During a sport, when a player is in action, the moving of an arm or a leg might seem like a simple task. But human movement is actually very complex. Movement is a change in place, position, or posture in relation to the surrounding environment which is the referntial frame. Movement of the organs or limbs occurs only when different body systems, such as the skeletal system, nervous system, neuromuscular system, digestive system and other systems work together.

For example when a baseball player hits a ball, the dynamics of the ball can be easily calculated using the Newton's laws, because we know the different forces and works done on the ball like the gravitational force, air drag, lift force etc. But in the body to create the movement of the arm during the hit, there are different sets of muscles and bones which are inturn supported at differnt joints like hinges and pivots providing the impulse. So it is impractical to calcualte the dynamics and apply the Newton's laws for the body and likewise real world objects where there are a lot of forces and energies that are in the act and contribute to the play.