A boy is standing on a weighing machine in a lift and the reading of the scale is 600 N. The lift experienced a breakdown and started falling freely under the action of gravity, what would be the reading of the scale?
0 N
As we know that, during free fall the only force acting is a man's weight itself. So, both lift and the boy inside would be in a state of free fall and hence the normal contact force between the weighing machine and the man would be zero. Therefore the reading of the scale would be zero.