I have been reading recently about tension. I don't exactly understand how it works. Here are my major doubts:
Here, Tension is said to be acting in the opposite direction of mg. I will assume tension is not the net force across the rope because net force is zero due to newton's third law. Thus, tension must simply be the force exerted on an object by another one through a rope/chain/rod, etc.In this case, since in all cases of an object exerting force on another object, since the other object exerts an equal and opposite force, the tension here is really the reaction force to the force of gravity. However, if pulling a box along the ground with a force F, tension along the rope is said to be in the same direction as F, but can't it be said that it exists in both directions as both the pulling body and the mass exert equal forces on each other? What decides which direction is assigned to tension?
