The Physics of Tripping
Please enjoy this video demonstration.
Now let's break it down and see what's happening.
Here we see Katherine Kamel walking normally. Her Weight and Normal Force balance out perfectly so that she does not crash through the floor or float off into the air. Her Applied Force pushes her backward and, as Newton's Third Law states, there is an equal and opposite reaction as the floor pushes her forward with the Force of Friction. With no friction force, she would simply slide around.
The next of Newton's Laws to come into play is his first. An object in motion stays in motion, an object at rest stays at rest (unless acted upon by an outside force). As Katherine advanced forward, she could have kept walking, but an outside force (an object causing her to trip) caused her to stop. This abrupt stoppage resulted in a loss of balance as her momentum pushed her forward. Again, her mg and Normal Force are equal as she is not breaking through the floor or floating away.
As Miss Kamel finally reaches her doom, her body falls at acceleration=9.8 m/s^2, AKA gravity. Having lost her balance, her body is left to gravity, which pushed her down to the ground. She is no longer moving in the x-direction and exerts a force on the cushions below her as she crashes down.
Oh, did you think I was done? Physics never ends! As noted previously, the Kamel exerted a force upon the cushions. This means, according to the Third Law of Motion, that the cushions have to exert an equal and opposite reaction back. This can be seen in this picture in the small amount of space between Katherine's legs and the cushions. So, having fallen, she gets ever so slightly projected back up into the air one last time.
Though the cushions put up a good fight, gravity wins out in the end and Katherine comes to a rest upon the cushions after a brutal encounter with physics.
All of this combined makes anyone who sees this laugh because they can enjoy someone else's pain rather than think of their own. But that is more psychology, and this is a physics project!
All of this combined makes anyone who sees this laugh because they can enjoy someone else's pain rather than think of their own. But that is more psychology, and this is a physics project!