For a Truck Tug of War, It’s All About Weight and Friction
It’s not fair to have a tug of war between a Tesla Cybertruck and a Ford F150. Why isn’t it fair? Well, the Cybertruck has a weight of 6843 pounds which is quite a bit more than 4000 to 5600 pounds for an F150. You can see in the Whistlindiesel video below, that when the two trucks have the same mass it’s pretty much a tie in a tug of war.
But why? Now for some physics.
Forces on a Tug of War Truck
Let’s start by looking at just one of the trucks in a tug of war. Suppose that it uses all four wheels to attempt to pull another vehicle. However, in this case — it’s just stuck there (that’s what we call a tie). Remember that Newton’s second law says that the net force on an object is equal to its mass multiplied by its acceleration. Like this:
If the truck is just sitting there, then its velocity is constant (staying at rest) so that it has an acceleration of zero meters per second squared. That means the net (vector) force is also zero. But what forces are acting on the truck? Well, there’s…
