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Dale E. Gary
NJIT Physics Department
1.1 Classical Mechanics
First began with Galileo (1584-1642), whose experiments with falling
bodies (and bodies rolling on an incline) led to Newtons 1st Law.
Newton (1642-1727) then developed his 3 laws of motion, together
with his universal law of gravitation.
This is where your previous experience in mechanics doubtless ends,
but the science of mechanics does not end there, as youll see in this
course.
Two additional, highly mathematical frameworks were developed by
the French mathematician Lagrange (1736-1813) and the Irish
mathematician Hamilton (1805-1865).
Together, these three alternative frameworks by Newton, Lagrange,
and Hamilton make up what is generally called Classical Mechanics.
They are distinct from the other great forms of non-classical
mechanics, Relativistic Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics, but both
of these borrow heavily from Classical Mechanics.
August 31, 2010
This Course
The first part of this course will be a review in terms of the basic
ideas of mechanics, which you should have already thoroughly
learned in your introductory physics courses.
However, we will be looking again at the ideas with more advanced
mathematical tools, and it is really these tools that we are trying to
hone during the first 5 chapters.
The 6th chapter introduces some ideas from the Calculus of Variations
that are the basis for the Lagrange formalism, which you will learn in
chapter 7.
The Lagrange approach then becomes another of our mathematical
tools for looking at more complex mechanical systems involving
rotations of rigid bodies, oscillating systems, and so on, through
chapter 11.
Unfortunately, we will not have time to study Hamiltons approach,
although I will try to get to it briefly in the final lecture.
August 31, 2010
1.2 Space and Time
We live in a three-dimensional world, and Ways of writing vector notation
for the purpose of this course we can F ma
consider space and time to be a fixed
framework against which we can make
F m a
measurements of moving bodies. F ma
Each point P in space can be labeled with a
distance and direction from some arbitrarily
chosen origin O. Expressed in terms of unit z axis
vectors x , y , z
r x x y y z z r
z y axis
It is equivalent to write the vector as an
ordered triplet of values x
y
r ( x, y , z )
x axis
We can also write components of vectors
using subscripts v (v x , v y , v z ) a (a x , a y , a z )
In the above example, this form has no real advantage, but in other
cases we will meet, this form is much simpler to use. The point is that
we may choose any convenient notation, and you should become
tolerant of different, but consistent forms of notation.
r s rs cos
3 s
r1s1 r2 s2 r3 s3 rn sn
n 1
r
Vector product, or cross product
p r s; r s rs sin
p x ry s z rz s y x y z x y z
p y rz s x rx s z
r s det rx ry rz rx ry rz
p z rx s y ry s x sx sy s z s x sy sz
(b) It is clear that the length of a vector does not depend on our choice of
coordinate axes. Thus, the result of part (a) guarantees that the scalar
product r r, as defined by (1.7), is the same for any choice of orthogonal
axes. Use this to prove that r s as defined by (1.7), is the same for any
choice of orthogonal axes. [Hint: Consider the length of the vector r s ].
(r s) (r s) r s r 2 s 2 2(r s)
2
r s r s r 2 s2 / 2
2
Everything on the right is a length (squared), which is the same for any
choice of axis, so the same is true of r s .
August 31, 2010
Lesson About the Problems
I cannot stress enough that doing problems is going to allow you to learn
10 times more than just reading the book. In the last problem, for
example, we learned how to distribute dot products, how to express the
length of a vector in terms of its dot product with itself, and generally how
to deal with proofs in terms of simple, easy-to-do steps.
The problems are written in a way to help you discover the answers. You
should pay attention to references in the text to the problems, and have a
look at the problems for further understanding.
The problems I assign may assume knowledge you can only gain from
following the thread from the text into the unassigned problems.
However, we will find in other coordinate systems the unit vectors are NOT
constant!
where I have introduced a new constant a = ec. So we are left with 1 constant
for a 1st-order equation, agreeing with n constants for an nth-order equation.
August 31, 2010
Inertial Reference Frames
We saw in the example of problems 1.7 and 1.16 that we are free to choose
our axes (our coordinate system) any way we wish. This is called a
reference frame.
What may not be obvious is that we can even choose a reference frame that
is moving (changing with time). In fact, it is pretty much impossible to do
anything else. If we choose a reference frame fixed to a lab bench, for
example, our reference frame is rotating with the Earth, orbiting the Sun,
and moving around the galaxy.
We define an inertial frame as any non-accelerating frame (one moving at
constant velocityboth magnitude and direction). In such frames, Newtons
first law holdsobjects not subject to forces move in straight lines.
A non-inertial frame is one that is accelerating. In such a frame, objects not
subject to forces appear to accelerate. We describe such effects as
fictitious forces, which well meet in Chapter 9Centrifugal Force and
Coriolis Force.
Youll note that our lab bench frame is not inertial! It is accelerating as
Earth moves. However, if our experiment does not take too long, and the
distance over which we make our measurements is not too great, we can
approximate the frame as inertial.
August 31, 2010
1.5 The Third Law and
Conservation of Momentum
Newtons first two laws refer to forces acting on a single particle. The Third
Law, by contrast, explicitly refers to two particles interactingthe particle
being accelerated, and the particle doing the forcing.
Introduce notation F21 (F-on-by) to represent the force on particle 2 by
particle 1. Then
Newtons Third Law
If particle 1 exerts a force F21 on particle 2, then particle 2 always
exerts a reaction force F12 on particle 1 given by F12 = F21.
p 1 F1 F12 ; p 2 F2 F21;
1
F12 P F1 F2 F12 F21 0
F1ext
p 1 F1 F1 F12 ; p 2 F2 F2 F21;
ext ext
F21 Fext1
P F1 F2 F1 F12 F2 F21 F1 F2 F ext
ext ext ext ext
2 p 1 F1 F1 F12 ; p 2 F2 F2 F21;
ext ext
F2ext Fext2
p ext Fext F ext 1 F ext 2 ; P 0
August 31, 2010
Multi-Particle Systems
It should be fairly obvious how to extend this to systems of N particles,
where N can be any number, including truly huge numbers like 1023.
Let a or b designate one of the particles. Both a and b can take any value
1, 2, , N. The net force on particle a is then
Fa Fab Faext p a
b a
where the sum runs over all particles except a itself (a particle does not
exert a force on itself).
The total force on the system of particles is just the sum of all of the p
a :
P p a
a
Each term Fab can be paired with Fba: Fab Fab Fba 0
a b a
a b a
m1v1 m2 v 2 m1 m2 v
Since v1 = v, and v2 = 0 (second object is stationary), we simply solve for v to
find:
m1
v v
m1 m2