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Physics question

I've just watched a video on using air track gliders wiith interrupt card and light gates to investigate velocity. In the experiment he found that velocity was constant as the time taken for the card to travel through the first light gat was the same as the time taken for the card to travel through the secon dlight gate.

However, since there is no friction, shouldn't glider be accelerating since there is a resultant force from being pushed initially? I know somewhere my logic is flawed but i cant see where, any help would be appreciated
Original post by john_iqbal786
I've just watched a video on using air track gliders wiith interrupt card and light gates to investigate velocity. In the experiment he found that velocity was constant as the time taken for the card to travel through the first light gat was the same as the time taken for the card to travel through the secon dlight gate.

However, since there is no friction, shouldn't glider be accelerating since there is a resultant force from being pushed initially? I know somewhere my logic is flawed but i cant see where, any help would be appreciated


The force only acts on the glider when it is actually being pushed. Once the hand or whatever pushed it loses contact the pushing force stops. After this point there is no resultant force on the object and therefore no acceleration
There's only an impulse which acts initially. After this impulse, there is no force acting on the glider but the glider is in constant motion because nothing opposes or reinforces its motion.

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