Chapter 6. Weight and contact forces
Supporting pages (HTML pages with embedded animations) |
| Weightlessness vs weightlessness |
| "Imperial units" - slugs and pounds |
Young's modulus, Hooke's law and material properties
Hooke's law and the limits to linearity. How Young's modulus is related to intermolecular or interatomic forces and energies. |
Simple experiments on coefficients of friction
Using a spring balance and an inclined plane to determine coefficients of friction, and whether they depend on normal force or area of contact. |
Wheels and rolling
Between a rolling wheel and the ground there is no relative motion. We derive equations for the kinematics of rolling. |
Car Physics
Acceleration examples: braking with constant force and decelerating with air resistance. Some other problems in car physics |
Background material on gravity
Gravity in context. Newton’s law and the shell theorem, Cavendish’s experiment, planetary motion, satellites, ‘weightlessness’, potential energy, escape velocity, blackholes, the rotation of the earth.
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Why g is not parallel to Fg
The earth's surface is not an inertial frame, because of the earth's rotation. Consequently, in that frame, Σ F ≠ ma. The approximation that mg = Fg is good but not exact. |
Frames of reference for Newton's and Maxwell's laws
-- Einstein's relativity |
| Revise vectors |
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Weight and contact forces |
