Physics and the Laws of Motion: Introduction
Have you ever considered what happens when you apply the brakes to a car? Have you ever thought about the way a ball flies through the air after it is hit by a bat? Have you tried to push a piece of furniture across the floor? Have you ever thought about why snowboarders apply wax to their snowboards?
As you have already guessed, all these activities pertain to motion.
This unit deals with the motion of objects. Almost all of the types of motion described in this unit are ones that you are already familiar with. You’ll learn how to understand these everyday experiences using physical concepts and equations.
Unit Objectives
After this unit, you should be able to:
- Define displacement, speed, velocity, and acceleration.
- Solve problems dealing with acceleration and motion.
- Solve velocity and acceleration problems through the use of graphs.
- Determine distance, velocity, acceleration, or time with the other given values and with the use of different motion equations.
- Determine the velocity, time, or distance in a free-fall problem.
- Distinguish between a scalar and a vector.
- Perform operations using vectors.
- Resolve vectors into components using sine and cosine.
- Apply the kinematics equations to solve problems using projectile motion.
- Solve problems using relative velocity.
- Evaluate observations and draw valid conclusions about projectile motion from experiments.
- Describe how forces affect the motion of an object.
- Differentiate the contact force and field force.
- Interpret and construct free-body diagrams.
- Explain Newton’s laws of motion.
- Describe the object’s acceleration in terms of its mass and the net force acting on it.
- redict the direction and the magnitude of the acceleration caused by a known net force.
- Explain the difference between mass and weight.
- Find the direction and magnitude of a normal force.
- Relate friction and the normal force.
- Use the coefficient of friction to calculate frictional force.