Newton's 2nd Law states that an object's acceleration is proportional to the sum of all of the forces acting on that object,* with mass as the constant of proportionality. It is useful to think of it as a statement of cause and effect: forces cause acceleration.
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| Newton's 2nd Law |
Note that the quantities in the expression are vectors, and thus both direction and magnitude must be accounted for. Also note that it is a statement about a single object -- if you have a system of objects, you will need to write down Newton's 2nd law for each of them.
* This statement holds in an inertial reference frame.
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