NCERT Solutions Curiosity Chapter 5 .1 What Is a Force? — Activity 5.1: Let us explore

Book page 635 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Take a large cardboard box. Try moving the box in as many different ways as you can think of.

Answer

Every way you can think of turns out to be either a push or a pull.

What you do to the box	Push or pull?	Which two objects interact
Press it with both hands so that it slides along the floor	Push	Your hands and the box
Tie a rope to it and drag it towards you	Pull	The rope and the box
Lift it up and carry it across the room	Pull (upwards)	Your arms and the box
Tilt it and roll it over edge by edge	Push	Your hand and the box
Nudge it along with a stick	Push (indirect contact)	The stick and the box
Kick it	Push	Your foot and the box

Why it matters: in every single row two objects are interacting, and the box moves only because one of them pushes or pulls the other. The push or pull applied on an object is what we call a force in science.

Q2.

Did you move the box in any other way than shown in Fig. 5.1?

Answer

Yes — many other ways are possible. Fig. 5.1 shows only three of them: (a) pushing, (b) pulling, and (c) lifting (pulling up) and carrying.

Other ways include rolling the box over end by end, dragging it with a rope tied to one side, sliding it on a piece of cloth, sweeping it along with a stick, or kicking it.

But whichever way you choose, you did only one of two things to the box: you pushed it or you pulled it. Lifting is simply a pull in the upward direction. That is the point of the activity — no matter how many methods you invent, they all reduce to a push or a pull, and the push or pull applied on an object is called force.

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