Newton’s second law of motion is part of the three Newton’s laws of motion and they are considered physical laws that “together laid the foundation for classical mechanics. They were first set down in his Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis in 1687”. They all describe “ the relationship between a body and the forces acting upon it, and its motion in response to said forces.” They’ve all been expressed and different ways but the second law is F=ma. This means that the “vector sum of the forces F on an object is equal to the mass m of that object multiplied by the acceleration vector a of the object. Newton used the three laws of motion to try to explain and “investigate the motion of many physical objects and systems”. What the second law tries to explain is that the “net force on an object is equal to the rate of change which is the derivative of its linear momentum p in a inertial reference frame.”

F=net force applied

m= mass of the body

a=the body’s acceleration

The second law is only viable for constant mass systems. The mass may be taken outside the differentiation operator by the constant factor rule in differentiation. What Newton is trying to explain through this law is the force applied on an object when there is any movement. Similar to the first law, the time “derivative of the momentum is non-zero when the momentum changes direction, even if there is no change in its magnitude. Any mass that is gained or lost by the system will cause a change in momentum that is not the result of an external force.” Shorter what the second law is doing that it tells you “ how to calculate the value of a force.” This force is measured in Newtons and is “one of the fundamental physical properties f a system and it comes in many forms”. “It holds up for a staggering array of everyday situations and is a workhorse in modern science and engineering.”

Sources

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/may/11/what-is-newtons-second-law-of-motion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton’s_laws_of_motion