Equilibrium (Cambridge (CIE) IGCSE Co-ordinated Sciences (Double Award)): Revision Note

Equilibrium

• In physics, the term equilibrium means:

  A state of balance or stability

• In other words, a system in equilibrium keeps doing what it’s doing without any change

Conditions for equilibrium

• For objects in equilibrium:

  • The forces on the object must be balanced

    • There must be no resultant force

  • The sum of clockwise moments on the object must equal the sum of anticlockwise moments

    • There must be no resultant moment

Examples of systems in equilibrium

When the forces and moments on an object are balanced, the object will remain in equilibrium