[Physics] Are Newton’s 1st and 3rd laws just consequences of the 2nd

forcesnewtonian-mechanics

Can Newton's 1st and 3rd laws be assumed given just $F=ma$. I know that the argument would be, "No, then there would only be 1 law". But I can't think of any situation where 1 and 3 aren't superfluous.

If you just told me $F=ma$:
I would assume nothing else causes an acceleration besides a force. So things not experiencing a force don't change velocity, even when velocity is 0. 1 ✔️

And, when two things that exist interact they use only their mass and acceleration to do so so they both must change in opposite ways. 3 ✔️

Best Answer

The position you are taking seems to depend on hindsight. Put yourself in the position of Newton being the first person to state these laws.

The first law was a flat-out statement that Aristotle was wrong when he stated that "nothing moves at all, unless a force which causes it to move is acting on it." Of course everybody now "knows" that Aristotle was wrong about that, so the "shock and awe factor" of Newton building his entire argument from that starting point no longer exists.

The second law then gives a definition of how to numerically measure the notion called "force." Of course it is consistent with the first law, since common sense would say that "no force" must have the measured value of $0$.

In modern terminology, the third law is a statement of the principle of conservation of momentum. It is independent of the first two laws - and apparently, the many crackpots who are still trying to invent perpetual motion machines and "free energy" devices still don't believe it is true, despite the empirical evidence (not to mention Noether's theorem).