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How does a tennis racket demonstrate Newton’s third law?

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A diagram with labeled vector illustrations. Panel A shows vector addition with two green arrows A and B forming a parallelogram, and their sum C as a red diagonal. Panel B shows vector subtraction, with A and negative B forming resultant D. Panel C demonstrates vector components using angles and projections. Panel D uses the right-hand rule with thumbs to show the direction of the cross product E = A x B and its opposite, -E = B x A. — mechanics Figure 1: (A) The vector sum C = A + B = B + A. (B) The vector difference A + (−B) = A − B = D. (C, left) A cos θ is the component of A along B and (right) B cos θ is the component of B along A. (D, left) The right-hand rule used to find the direction of E = A × B and (right) the right-hand rule used to find the direction of −E = B × A.

A tennis racket demonstrates Newton’s third law of motion during the collision between the racket and the ball.

According to the third law, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and directed to contrary parts. When a player swings a racket and strikes a ball, the racket exerts a forceful impact on the ball, causing it to change its momentum and direction. Simultaneously, the ball exerts an equal and opposite force back onto the racket strings.1

These forces represent an action-reaction pair acting on two different bodies: the force on the ball accelerates it away from the racket, while the force on the racket is felt by the player’s hand and arm. Because these forces act on separate objects, they do not cancel each other out, but rather govern the physical interaction of the collision.1