Tension Help?

What does it really mean?

Published on June 27, 2009 By SplitPeaSoup In Pure Technology

I am trying to figure out how tension works. It is not intuitive to me. I know tension means the stretch on a string that opposes some force. But what happens when forces pull on either side?

-20N <--------------string-------------------> 20N

Is the total tension 20N, 40N, or 80N, and why? I would think it is 0N of tension so that there's no net force on the string, but that's just ridiculus.

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