# Forces & Acceleration

**Track:** Physics, Motion & Emergence — Creative Coding — the existing 50
**Framework / surface:** p5.js
**Level:** Intermediate
**Prerequisites:** Vectors: Magnitude & Direction, Objects & Classes

**In one line:** Force → acceleration → velocity → position — believable motion.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Force produces acceleration, acceleration accumulates into velocity, and velocity accumulates into position—a cascade that Isaac Newton's second law, F = ma, compresses into a single proportion. Translated to code as repeated small steps, a form of Euler integration, the law lets gravity, wind, and friction be summed as vectors and applied each frame to a mass. The result is weight: objects that ease into motion and resist stopping, that fall and drift with conviction. Daniel Shiffman's "The Nature of Code" treats this as the engine room of simulation—nothing looks physical until acceleration, rather than position, is the thing being pushed. The aesthetic is gravity made legible.