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Often times, success in physics demands that you have the proper approach - a good game plan. A good game plan for this question would be to:
- First, identify if the forces are balanced or unbalanced; and if unbalanced, determine the direction of the unbalanced force (see Think About It section below). This will allow you to eliminate several choices from among the ten diagrams.
- Second, use your understanding of the various force types to determine if there is a force in each direction - up, down, right, left. This requires that you have a good understanding of the different types of forces and when they are present and absent (use the link in the Hot Link section if necessary). This second step allows you to reduce the number of choices to one.
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If an object is moving with a constant speed in a given direction, then the individual forces acting upon it are balanced. Whichever force diagram you choose, make sure that it is a diagram representing a balance of forces. The up force arrow and the down force arrow should be the same size. And if there are horizontal force arrows, the right arrow should be the same size as the left arrow.
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