Noun

Singular force

Plural countable and uncountable; plural forces

force (countable and uncountable; plural forces)

1. (countable) Anything that is able to make a big change in a person or thing.

Wikipedia

1. (uncountable, physics) A physical quantity that denotes ability to push, pull, twist or accelerate a body and is measured in a unit dimensioned in mass × distance/time² (ML/T²): SI: newton (N); CGS: dyne (dyn)
2. (countable) A group that aims to attack, control, or constrain.

   police force

3. (uncountable) The ability to attack, control, or constrain.

   show of force

4. (countable) A magic trick in which the outcome is known to the magician beforehand, especially one involving the apparent free choice of a card by another person.
5. A fictional semi-sentient phenomenon that certain individuals can call upon for assistance as in in the Star Wars stories. See also Force.
   • May the force be with you.
6. (law) Legal validity.
   • The law will come into force in January.
7. (law) Either unlawful violence, as in a "forced entry", or lawful compulsion.

Derived terms

• brute force
• centripetal force
• centrifugal force
• Coulomb force
• Coriolis force

• come into force
• force field
• force to be reckoned with
• fundamental force
• spent force
• workforce

In physics, a force is any external agent that causes a change in the motion of a free body, or that causes stress in a fixed body. It can also be described by intuitive concepts such as a push or pull that can cause an object with mass to change its velocity (which includes to begin moving from a state of rest), i.e., to accelerate, or which can cause a flexible object to deform. Force has both magnitude and direction, making it a vector quantity. Newton's second law states that an object with a constant mass will accelerate in proportion to the net force acting upon and in inverse proportion to its mass. Equivalently, the net force on an object equals the rate at which its momentum changes. See also thrust.

Forces acting on three-dimensional objects may also cause them to rotate or deform, or result in a change in pressure or even change volume in some cases. The tendency of a force to cause changes in rotational speed about an axis is called torque. Deformation and pressure are the result of stress forces within an object.

Since antiquity, scientists have used the concept of force in the study of stationary and moving objects. However, descriptions of forces by Aristotle incorporated fundamental misunderstandings, which, despite advances made by the third century BC philosopher Archimedes from studies of simple machines, persisted for many centuries. By the seventeenth century, Sir Isaac Newton corrected these misunderstandings with mathematical insight that remained unchanged for nearly three hundred years. By the early 20th century, Einstein in his theory of general relativity successfully predicted relativistic adjustments to Newton's model for gravity by ushering in the concept of a space-time continuum.

The recent theory of particle physics known as the Standard Model associates forces at the level of quantum mechanics. The Standard Model predicts that exchange particles called gauge bosons are the fundamental means by which forces are emitted and absorbed. Only four main interactions are known: in order of decreasing strength, they are: strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational. High-energy particle physics observations made during the 1970s and 1980s confirmed that the weak and electromagnetic forces are expressions of a more fundamental electroweak interaction.

Force is the capacity to do work or cause physical change; energy, strength, or active power to a person, place or thing.

Sourced

• Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
  • Foundation by Isaac Asimov

• Violence is the repartee of the illiterate.
  • Punch by Alan Brien

• Force is not a remedy.
  • In a speech by John Bright

• The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men.
  • The Face of Violence by Jacob Bronowski

• The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
  • In the Conciliation with America speech given by Edmund Burke

• La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure.
  • Translation: The reason of the strongest is always the best
  • Le loup et l'agneau by Jean de la Fontaine

• Vis consili expers mole ruit sua.
  • Translation: Brute force without judgement collapses under its own weight
  • Odes by Horace

• A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit upon it.
  • Philosophy of Plotinus by William Ralph Inge

• A riot is at the bottom the language of the unheard.
  • Chaos or Community by Martin Luther King

• Let there be no violence in religion.
  • Chapter 2 of the Koran

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Tue Sep 1 22:41:48 2009