MiniMag - The Educational Children's Magazine
Exploring perpetual motion and Newton’s spheres
Perpetual motion is a concept that might seem like magic, but it’s a bit like a never-ending game where something keeps moving forever without anyone having to push it or add energy to it. However, in the real world, perpetual motion machines don’t work because they go against the laws of physics.
One famous example related to this is called “Newton’s cradle,” which uses metal spheres or balls hanging in a row. When you pull back one of the balls and let it swing into the others, you might notice that the ball on the other end moves away, while the others in the middle stay still.
This can be fascinating!
However, even though it seems like the balls are moving forever, they eventually stop. This happens because of a few important scientific ideas:
In the real world, there’s always a little bit of friction or resistance that slows things down. As the balls hit each other, they lose a tiny bit of energy with each collision, which makes them stop eventually.
The balls are always pulled down by gravity, and this force also slows them down.
The air around the balls also creates a bit of resistance that makes them slow down.
So, even though it looks like the balls could keep moving forever, they eventually come to a stop because of these forces. This is a great example to help you understand why perpetual motion, where something keeps moving forever without any energy input, doesn’t work in the real world. In nature, things need some energy to keep moving, and eventually, they’ll slow down and stop because of forces like friction, gravity and air resistance. That’s why we can’t create machines that truly have perpetual motion!