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A person is standing on a frictionless horizontal ground. How can he m

June 1, 2025 by rawan239

A person is standing on a frictionless horizontal ground. How can he move by a certain distance on this ground?

By sneezing

By jumping

By running

By rolling

This question was previously asked in

UPSC CDS-2 – 2017

Download PDF Attempt Online

The correct option is A) By sneezing.

On a frictionless horizontal surface, a person cannot propel themselves forward by pushing against the ground (like walking, running, or jumping) because there is no friction to provide an external reaction force in the horizontal direction. However, by sneezing, the person expels air in one direction. According to Newton’s third law of motion, this action creates an equal and opposite reaction force on the person’s body, propelling them in the opposite direction of the expelled air.

This is a classic physics problem illustrating Newton’s laws of motion, particularly the conservation of momentum. In the absence of external forces (friction), the total momentum of the person-air system remains constant. If the person expels air with a certain momentum, their body must acquire an equal and opposite momentum to conserve the total momentum (initially zero).

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