Your problem is that you are too much tied to your experience that tells you that you need force to keep something moving. But that was the ingenious approach by Newton to figure out what would happen if there is a single object in vacuum that does not interact with anything.
Your question with pushing an object is related to Newton 3. You, in fact, apply a force on the object that results in a force from the object to you. Since you are much heavier and you also can use additional force to keep you at rest, you will more or less stay in position. The object will then act with a force on the table. If not compensated by other forces such as friction on the ground, this results in the table to move. The same force acts back on the object, but with opposite direction. If the net forces acting on your object (your initial force and the force from the table on the object) do not balance, this results in an acceleration following Newton 2 (F=ma).
Note that at rest, the friction is much stronger. You have to apply a larger force to commence with moving the box, while you need much less force to keep it moving at constant velocity. The reason is the smaller friction of gliding objects.
By the way, box on a table is already quite complex. Consider instead a car at rest. In order to accelerate, the car acts via the wheels with a force on the earth in the opposite direction of where you want to go. To move forward, the force is backward, and vice versa. The earth acts with the same force on your car, but in the opposite direction. This pushes your car in the desired direction. In principle, earth gets accelerated, too, but this is negligible due to the ratio of masses.
Finally, I would like to add that Newton 1 yields a definition of a distinct class of reference frames. They do not rotate or accelerate with respect to each other, and all yield that an object is either at rest or moving with constant velocity in the absence of forces. Our earth is not such a frame, even in the absence of gravity, because it is rotating.
ThomasKWW t1_jb03yhw wrote
Reply to comment by KWOOOSH in How is it that objects in equilibrium stay in motion at constant velocity? by KWOOOSH
Your problem is that you are too much tied to your experience that tells you that you need force to keep something moving. But that was the ingenious approach by Newton to figure out what would happen if there is a single object in vacuum that does not interact with anything.
Your question with pushing an object is related to Newton 3. You, in fact, apply a force on the object that results in a force from the object to you. Since you are much heavier and you also can use additional force to keep you at rest, you will more or less stay in position. The object will then act with a force on the table. If not compensated by other forces such as friction on the ground, this results in the table to move. The same force acts back on the object, but with opposite direction. If the net forces acting on your object (your initial force and the force from the table on the object) do not balance, this results in an acceleration following Newton 2 (F=ma).
Note that at rest, the friction is much stronger. You have to apply a larger force to commence with moving the box, while you need much less force to keep it moving at constant velocity. The reason is the smaller friction of gliding objects.
By the way, box on a table is already quite complex. Consider instead a car at rest. In order to accelerate, the car acts via the wheels with a force on the earth in the opposite direction of where you want to go. To move forward, the force is backward, and vice versa. The earth acts with the same force on your car, but in the opposite direction. This pushes your car in the desired direction. In principle, earth gets accelerated, too, but this is negligible due to the ratio of masses.
Finally, I would like to add that Newton 1 yields a definition of a distinct class of reference frames. They do not rotate or accelerate with respect to each other, and all yield that an object is either at rest or moving with constant velocity in the absence of forces. Our earth is not such a frame, even in the absence of gravity, because it is rotating.