Newton's Third Law: Introduction

Whenever one body exerts a force on a second body, the first body experiences a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction, to the force that it exerts. For instance, when a person pushes on a wall, the wall exerts an equal and opposite force towards the person. This brings us to Newton's third law of motion. Newton's third law represents a certain symmetry in nature: Forces always occur in pairs, and one body cannot exert a force on another without experiencing a force itself. This law is sometimes loosely referred to as "action-reaction,"where the force exerted is the action and the force experienced as a consequence is the reaction. Newton's third law has practical uses in analyzing the origin of forces and understanding which forces are external to a system.

There are two important features of Newton's third law. First, the forces exerted (the action and reaction) are always equal in magnitude but opposite in direction. Second, these forces are acting on different bodies or systems. In other words, the two forces are distinct forces that do not act on the same body. Thus, they do not cancel out each other.

This text is adapted from Openstax, University Physics Volume 1, Section 5.5: Newton's Third Law.