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Introduction to Classical Mechanics
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About the lecture
In this mini-lecture, we introduce classical mechanics, focusing in particular on: (i) classical mechanics vs classical dynamics; (ii) Isaac Newton’s motivations for contributing to this area of physics; (iii) previous understandings of motion before classical mechanics was developed; and (iv) inertial states.
About the lecturer
Derek Raine is an Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester. His research has ranged over Relativity, Cosmology, General Relativistic Quantum Field Theory, Astrophysics, Biophysics, and education. Professor Raine was involved with the University of Leicester’s Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) research where he developed alternative approaches to teaching, including computer simulations, problem-based and research-based learning, flipped learning, and spaced repetition.
I'm Derek Rain,
00:00:06professor of Physics at the University of Lester.
00:00:07In this course, we're going to talk about classical mechanics.
00:00:11Classical mechanics is the theory of how bodies move under forces.
00:00:16People also talk about classical dynamic There's no
00:00:23real distinction between mechanics and dynamics.
00:00:27Mechanics comes from the Greek from machines,
00:00:31so people tend to use it to real systems,
00:00:33systems you can actually construct.
00:00:37Dynamics is a little bit more theoretical comes from the
00:00:39Greek for power, be used about artificial devices like the the
00:00:42tractor beam of the starship enterprise.
00:00:47The classical
00:00:50refers to the fact that we're dealing with bodies that move
00:00:51slowly relative to the speed of light,
00:00:56much less than the speed of light.
00:00:59The this to be contrasted with relative mechanics,
00:01:01which deals with bodies that move close to or at
00:01:05the speed of light.
00:01:09Now Trasco Mechanical was developed
00:01:13as an attempt to understand the motion of planets.
00:01:17Let's think about that for a moment.
00:01:23Why did Newton middle of the seventeenth century
00:01:26devote his attention to how planets moved while he was
00:01:30locked down in Lincolnshire because of a plague in the
00:01:35University town of K bridge,
00:01:38why was he thinking about the motion of planets and not about
00:01:40the biology of the plague?
00:01:43The answer is at least in part because by the seventeenth century,
00:01:45there were two thousand years worth of data on planetary motion.
00:01:51And so the motion of the planets was known with sea
00:01:56whereas very little was known about the motion of bodies on
00:01:59earth and even less about things like plague.
00:02:03So the most of planets provided an opportunity
00:02:08to develop a theory of mechanics where it should be tested
00:02:12and then to could be applied
00:02:17to objects on earth and emotional bodies on earth and
00:02:22gave rise then to the industrial revolution.
00:02:26So for close to two thousand years,
00:02:31people had believed that
00:02:35in order that bodies should move,
00:02:39they needed to be forced to do so it needed a force to make
00:02:41bodies move. Now we can actually see that that's not true.
00:02:45So we imagine that we're floating freely in space and
00:02:50we're looking out of our spaceship window at the start
00:02:54and a body floats by.
00:02:59Now is that body floating by because that body is
00:03:03moving and your stationary?
00:03:06Or are you moving past the body that's stationary?
00:03:09And is that the reason that it moves across the window?
00:03:12Which is it? Are you moving or is the body moving?
00:03:15You can't tell. You can't tell whether a body is
00:03:19moving with constant velocity or whether you're moving with
00:03:24constant velocity relative to that body.
00:03:28Now suppose you turn your rocket motors on, whoosh,
00:03:33you're forced back in your seat, you accelerate,
00:03:36you can certainly tell that you're accelerating.
00:03:40So we can distinguish
00:03:43between motion at constant velocity
00:03:45or a state of rest and on the one hand and on the other
00:03:48hand changing velocity acceleration
00:03:53and state of non constant velocity
00:03:57to avoid the mouthful of a state of rest or
00:04:01emotional velocity all the time,
00:04:05we talk about an inertial state. So an inertial state
00:04:08means a state of rest or motion at constant velocity.
00:04:12In the next section, we'll go on to talk about the
00:04:17first of the laws that Newton developed in order to
00:04:21describe the motion of bodies under forces.
00:04:26
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Raine, D. (2023, August 24). 2. Mechanics - Introduction to Classical Mechanics [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/options/2-mechanics?auth=0&lesson=15670&option=14517&type=lesson
MLA style
Raine, D. "2. Mechanics – Introduction to Classical Mechanics." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 24 Aug 2023, https://massolit.io/options/2-mechanics?auth=0&lesson=15670&option=14517&type=lesson