Question

In a tug of war game, if the two teams exert equal forces, none of the teams wins. Why?

Answer 1

Hint-Tug-of-war game is a simple game in which two teams try to pull a rope in the opposite direction to win the game. The team which exerts greater pulling force in against the other will move the joint point near toward the shelf and win the game. The answer to this question is based on the law of Newton’s first law of motion.
Newton’s third law: A body continues its state of rest or motion unless some external unbalanced force changes the state.

Complete step-by-step answer:
If the two teams exert equal forces, none of the teams wins. To get the logical reason for such an event we have to understand the physics behind this game. The tug of war games can be explained with Newton’s second law of motion. According to this law whenever members of team A and team B exerts some unbalanced pulling force on the rope the joint winning point will move along the direction of pulling force. The rope here in this game is the means of transfer of forces. The team A to tug is the action force, causing the pull on the rope but because of the reaction force, the other teams at the rope ends feel the pull but when each team is pulling equally on the rope then the acceleration of the rope will be zero under the action of these balance forces.

Note- Students should note that when the forces are unbalanced, the system of two teams accelerates in the direction of the net force. During this activity, third law force pairs are equal and opposite to each other, even when the members of the team accelerate and the cause of this acceleration is unbalanced frictional forces at different parts of the system.