Newtonian Mechanics

The author presents tools such as displacement, velocity, and acceleration to describe projectile motion and uniform circular motion. This class-tested book also introduces angular displacement, angular speed, and angular acceleration as well as the use of these to describe the motion of particles with constant angular acceleration.

This book discusses topics related to Newtonian mechanics and is ideal for a one semester course. Introductory topics are first presented including: time, space, and matter; different coordinate systems; vectors; and unit vectors;. The author presents tools such as displacement, velocity, and acceleration to describe projectile motion and uniform circular motion. Newton’s laws of motion and concepts of force and mass are discussed followed by kinetic energy, potential energy, and both conservative and non-conservative forces. This class-tested book also introduces angular displacement, angular speed, and angular acceleration as well as the use of these to describe the motion of particles with constant angular acceleration.  Concepts of torque, angular momentum, and rotational inertia are presented to explain the motion of physical pendulum. Motion under central force is also covered and Kepler’s laws are derived.