A force is an influence that can cause an object to change its velocity unless counterbalanced by other forces. The concept of force makes the everyday notion of pushing or pulling mathematically precise. Because the magnitude and direction of a force are both important, force is a vector quantity. The SI unit of force is the newton (N), and force is often represented by the symbol F.
In Newtonian mechanics, momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. If m is an object's mass and v is its velocity, then the object's momentum p is: In the International System of Units (SI), the unit of measurement of momentum is the kilogram metre per second (kg⋅m/s), which is dimensionally equivalent to the newton-second.
Newton's laws of motion are three physical laws that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws, which provide the basis for Newtonian mechanics, can be paraphrased as follows:
- A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by a force.
- At any instant of time, the net force on a body is equal to the body's acceleration multiplied by its mass or, equivalently, the rate at which the body's momentum is changing with time.
- If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions.
In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space is the unique point at any given time where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. For a rigid body containing its center of mass, this is the point to which a force may be applied to cause a linear acceleration without an angular acceleration. Calculations in mechanics are often simplified when formulated with respect to the center of mass. It is a hypothetical point where the entire mass of an object may be assumed to be concentrated to visualise its motion. In other words, the center of mass is the particle equivalent of a given object for application of Newton's laws of motion.
Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids and the forces on them. It has applications in a wide range of disciplines, including mechanical, aerospace, civil, chemical, and biomedical engineering, as well as geophysics, oceanography, meteorology, astrophysics, and biology.
Daniel Kleppner is an American physicist who is the Lester Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-founder and co-director of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms. His areas of science include atomic, molecular, and optical physics, and his research interests include experimental atomic physics, laser spectroscopy, and high precision measurements.
Robert J. Kolenkow is an American physicist and teacher. He is best known for being the coauthor, along with Daniel Kleppner, of a popular undergraduate physics textbook, An Introduction to Mechanics.
General Relativity is a graduate textbook and reference on Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity written by the gravitational physicist Robert Wald.
Classical Mechanics is a textbook written by Herbert Goldstein, a professor at Columbia University. Intended for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students, it has been one of the standard references on its subject around the world since its first publication in 1950.
In physics and in the mathematics of plane curves, a Cotes's spiral is one of a family of spirals classified by Roger Cotes.
Classical mechanics is a physical theory describing the motion of objects such as projectiles, parts of machinery, spacecraft, planets, stars, and galaxies. The development of classical mechanics involved substantial change in the methods and philosophy of physics. The qualifier classical distinguishes this type of mechanics from physics developed after the revolutions in physics of the early 20th century, all of which revealed limitations in classical mechanics.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics is a physics textbook based on a great number of lectures by Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate who has sometimes been called "The Great Explainer". The lectures were presented before undergraduate students at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), during 1961–1964. The book's co-authors are Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands.
Classical Mechanics is a well-established textbook written by Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble and Frank Berkshire of the Imperial College Mathematics Department. The book provides a thorough coverage of the fundamental principles and techniques of classical mechanics, a long-standing subject which is at the base of all of physics.
Principles of Quantum Mechanics is a textbook by Ramamurti Shankar. The book has been through two editions. It is used in many college courses around the world.
Introduction to Electrodynamics is a textbook by physicist David J. Griffiths. Generally regarded as a standard undergraduate text on the subject, it began as lecture notes that have been perfected over time. Its most recent edition, the fifth, was published in 2023 by Cambridge University. This book uses SI units exclusively. A table for converting between SI and Gaussian units is given in Appendix C.
Thermodynamics and an Introduction to Thermostatistics is a textbook written by Herbert Callen that explains the basics of classical thermodynamics and discusses advanced topics in both classical and quantum frameworks. It covers the subject in an abstract and rigorous manner and contains discussions of applications. The textbook contains three parts, each building upon the previous. The first edition was published in 1960 and a second followed in 1985.
A Treatise on the Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies is a treatise and textbook on analytical dynamics by British mathematician Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker. Initially published in 1904 by the Cambridge University Press, the book focuses heavily on the three-body problem and has since gone through four editions and has been translated to German and Russian. Considered a landmark book in English mathematics and physics, the treatise presented what was the state-of-the-art at the time of publication and, remaining in print for more than a hundred years, it is considered a classic textbook in the subject. In addition to the original editions published in 1904, 1917, 1927, and 1937, a reprint of the fourth edition was released in 1989 with a new foreword by William Hunter McCrea.
Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, often called Griffiths, is an introductory textbook on quantum mechanics by David J. Griffiths. The book is considered a standard undergraduate textbook in the subject. Originally published by Pearson Education in 1995 with a second edition in 2005, Cambridge University Press (CUP) reprinted the second edition in 2017. In 2018, CUP released a third edition of the book with Darrell F. Schroeter as co-author; this edition is known as Griffiths and Schroeter.
Modern Quantum Mechanics, often called Sakurai or Sakurai and Napolitano, is a standard graduate-level quantum mechanics textbook written originally by J. J. Sakurai and edited by San Fu Tuan in 1985, with later editions coauthored by Jim Napolitano. Sakurai died in 1982 before he could finish the textbook and both the first edition of the book, published in 1985 by Benjamin Cummings, and the revised edition of 1994, published by Addison-Wesley, were edited and completed by Tuan posthumously. The book was updated by Napolitano and released two later editions. The second edition was initially published by Addison-Wesley in 2010 and rereleased as an eBook by Cambridge University Press, who released a third edition in 2020.
