Mechanics, for this
level, represents the lion's share of material. Mechanics can be
further catagorized into "Kinematics" and "Newton's Laws." Each of
these topics can, in turn, be broken down to consider motion in a
Linear or Circular fashion.
We start with kinematics which analyzes motion without
really considering why things move. The idea is to be able to predict
where things came from and where they will go given set of existing
measurements.
This is the meat of the matter. Forces
are the origin of all forms of transformation in both classical and
modern physics. In mechanics this manifests itself as a change in the
state of motion. This is the essense of Newton's discovery. Except for
really wierd circumstances in non-euclidian space, a force will give
rise to an acceleration and accelerations must have invoved a force.
| Newton's Laws |
| Introducion [PDF] Slide show from class |
The BIG Picture How it all ties together |
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| Free Body Diagrams This provides some practice for drawing the pesky diagrams that are essential to setting up the equations. |
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Motion in a circle is just a special case
where the speed of an object can be constant but still have
acceleration due to the constantly changing direction. In this
circumstance Newton's second law takes a special form.
Forces that are position dependant can
give rise to some interesting types of motion. The simplest form of
these forces is one that varies linearly with displacement from some
starting position. If the force opposes the displacement then the
motion will be a type we call "Harmonic."
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