A popular and dangerous circus act is the human cannonball, in which a person is shot from a cannon. Suppose the cannon has a barrel that is 3.05 m long and 16700 J of work done to accelerate the acrobat. What is the force exerted by the cannon on the acrobat?

If work is done on the system which is acrobat for the present case, then the ratio of work done to the distance of the contact force medium can give us the force exerted on the acrobat or system.

As here the cannon is the source of force and it has a barrel of 3.05 m that means the cannon ball should travel the distance of 3.05 m to reach the acrobat and it has done a work of about 16700 J to accelerate the cannon ball. So as per Newton's third law of motion, the force gained by the cannon ball due to the work done on it will be equal to the force exerted on the acrobat by the cannon.

Thus, as work done is the product of force with displacement. Here the force experienced by the cannon ball will be the ratio of work done to the distance covered by the cannon ball.

[tex]Force = \frac{Work done }{Distance} = \frac{16700}{3.05} = 5,475 N.[/tex]

So, the force experienced by the cannon ball is 5.47 kN and the same force will be exerted on the acrobat.

Thus, the force of about 5.47 kN will be exerted on the acrobat by the cannon.