Thursday, May 12, 2005

Particle mechanics

I mentioned a while ago that I wanted to start discussing some of my thoughts on logic. I'm going to have to hold off on that for a little, while I discuss mechanics and the like.

One of the textbooks I've been looking at lately said something about mechanics being at the foundation of physics. To a large extent, I agree with this. Although by itself, particle mechanics doesn't seem to be a particularly large or useful area of knowledge, it's important to understand it in order to understand many other subjects.

I have divisions of particle mechanics:

1) Description. Many introductions tend to skip over this, but there are significant differences between particles and other extended bodies.

2) Kinematics. This subject includes the description of motion, without regard to its cause.

3) Force and Momentum. This includes Newton's laws of motion

4) Work and energy

5) Systems of particles.

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