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Welcome to our Physics lesson on The Meaning of Action and Reaction, this is the first lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Newton's Third Law of Motion, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.
In the Physics tutorial "What Causes the Motion? The Meaning of Force", we gave the following definition of force:
"A force is any interaction that, when unopposed, will change the motion of an object."
Please note the word "interaction" used in the above sentence. By definition, an interaction means "a mutual or reciprocal action." This means that when an action occurs from an object A to another object B, there is a reaction from the object B to the object A as well.
But how such action and reaction are related to each other? We should seek the answer for this question in the simplified definition of Newton's Third Law of Motion, which says:
"For every action, there is an equal size but opposite reaction."
If we consider again the punch-the-wall example mentioned in the Introduction paragraph, we can say that the force we use to punch the wall represents the "action", while the force exerted by the wall on our hand represents the "reaction."
You have reached the end of Physics lesson 4.7.1 The Meaning of Action and Reaction. There are 4 lessons in this physics tutorial covering Newton's Third Law of Motion, you can access all the lessons from this tutorial below.
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