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Mechanics

We will look at changes that involve motion of one form or another —running and jumping, throwing balls, lifting weights.

There are two big questions we must tackle to study how things change by moving:

  • How do we describe motion? How should we measure or characterize the motion

    if we want to analyze it mathematically?

  • How do we explain motion? Why do objects have the particular motion they do?

    Why, when you toss a ball upward, does it go up and then come back down rather than keep going up?

    What are the “laws of nature” that allow us to predict an object’s motion?

Kinematics deals with the concepts that are needed to describe motion. Dynamics deals with the effect that forces have on motion. Together, kinematics and dynamics form the branch of physics known as Mechanics.

A 10-kg box slides down a plane inclined at an angle (0 = 30°). The plane has a coefficient of friction(µ= 0.1). The box starts from rest and slides down the plane for 2.0 s. Draw a free-body diagram of this situation
Tracey slides from rest down a 51.0 m long ice-covered hill on her skates. The frictionless hill is inclined at 18° to the horizontal. Once she reaches the bottom of the hill, the ice is covered with deep snow which has a coefficient of kinetic friction o
A 1000-kg car is initially traveling at 30 m/s. The driver applies the brakes suddenly, and the friction from the road exerts 9000 N of force on the car. If the car uniformly decelerates to a complete stop, how far does the car travel during the
An archer stands on a castle wall that is 45 m high. He shoots an arrow with a velocity of 10.0 m/s at an angle of 45° relative to the horizontal. The arrow is shot into a constant headwind that exerts a force of 0.05 N on the arrow. The arrow has a

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Subcategories

Kinematics (Speed, Velocity and Acceleration) 42

Dynamics (Forces and Newton's Laws of Motion) 54

Simple Harmonic Motion 15

Momentum 42