Abstract
In this chapter we study the dynamics of the material point, namely the laws governing motion to its causes, which are the forces. These laws were discovered by Galilei and by Newton and assumed by Newton as postulates in his development of mechanics. After having operationally defined the concept of force, we shall state the three laws of Newton. We shall study the motion of pendulums and see the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass. We shall introduce the concepts of work and of kinetic and potential energies and meet the fundamental law of energy conservation.
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- 1.
The reader is warned that one can still find books and articles calling the product m iγ(υ) “relativistic mass” and m i “rest mass”. The former in a relativistic regime increases with increasing velocity. These concepts were introduced in the last years of the 19th century and the first ones of the 20th when relativity theory was being developed and things were not yet completely clear. They are misleading concepts (what varies with velocity is the Lorentz factor, not the mass, which is invariant) and should be avoided. We shall treat relativity in Chap. 6.
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Bettini, A. (2016). Dynamics of a Material Point. In: A Course in Classical Physics 1—Mechanics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29257-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29257-1_2
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-29257-1
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