Newtonian Physics (Light and Matter series, Book 1)

290 Pages·2000·9.61 MB·english

by  Benjamin Crowell

Book 1 in the Light and Matter series of free introductory physics textbooks
www.lightandmatter.com

The Light and Matter series of
introductory physics textbooks:
1 Newtonian Physics
2 Conservation Laws
3 Vibrations and Waves
4 Electricity and Magnetism
5 Optics
6 The Modern Revolution in Physics
Benjamin Crowell
www.lightandmatter.com
Fullerton, California
www.lightandmatter.com
copyright 1998-2005 Benjamin Crowell
edition 2.3
rev. April 9, 2005
This book is licensed under the Creative Com-
mons Attribution-ShareAlike license, version 1.0,
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/, except
for those photographs and drawings of which I am not
the author, as listed in the photo credits. If you agree
to the license, it grants you certain privileges that you
would not otherwise have, such as the right to copy the
book, or download the digital version free of charge from
www.lightandmatter.com.
ISBN 0-9704670-1-X
To Paul Herrschaft and Rich Muller.

Brief Contents
0 Introduction and Review 19
1 Scaling and Order-of-Magnitude Estimates 47
Motion in One Dimension
2 Velocity and Relative Motion 73
3 Acceleration and Free Fall 95
4 Force and Motion 127
5 Analysis of Forces 149
Motion in Three Dimensions
6 Newton’s Laws in Three Dimensions 179
7 Vectors 191
8 Vectors and Motion 203
9 Circular Motion 217
10 Gravity 233
Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 shape,59.—Changesinshapetoaccommo-
date changes in size, 61.
0 Introduction and Review 1.4 Order-of-Magnitude Estimates. . . 63
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
0.1 The Scientific Method . . . . . . 19
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
0.2 What Is Physics? . . . . . . . . 23
Isolated systems and reductionism, 25.
0.3 How to Learn Physics . . . . . . 27
0.4 Self-Evaluation . . . . . . . . . 29
0.5 Basics of the Metric System. . . . 30
Themetricsystem,30.—Thesecond,31.—
The meter, 32.—The kilogram, 32.—
Combinations of metric units, 32.
0.6 The Newton, the Metric Unit of Force 34
0.7 Less Common Metric Prefixes. . . 35
0.8 Scientific Notation. . . . . . . . 36
0.9 Conversions . . . . . . . . . . 38
Should that exponent be positive or
negative?, 39.
0.10 Significant Figures . . . . . . . 40
I Motion in One Dimension
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2 Velocity and Relative Motion
2.1 Types of Motion. . . . . . . . . 73
Rigid-bodymotiondistinguishedfrommo-
tion that changes an object’s shape,
73.—Center-of-mass motion as opposed to
rotation, 73.—Center-of-mass motion in
one dimension, 76.
2.2 Describing Distance and Time. . . 77
A point in time as opposed to duration,
77.—Position as opposed to change in
position, 78.—Frames of reference, 79.
2.3 Graphs of Motion; Velocity . . . . 80
Motion with constant velocity, 80.—
Motion with changing velocity, 80.—
1 Scaling and Order-of- Conventions about graphing, 81.
2.4 The Principle of Inertia. . . . . . 84
Magnitude Estimates
Physical effects relate only to a change in
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . 47 velocity, 84.—Motion is relative, 85.
Area and volume, 47. 2.5 Addition of Velocities. . . . . . . 87
1.2 Scaling of Area and Volume. . . . 50 Addition of velocities to describe relative
Galileo on the behavior of nature on large motion,87.—Negativevelocitiesinrelative
and small scales, 50.—Scaling of area and motion, 87.
volume for irregularly shaped objects, 54. 2.6 Graphs of Velocity Versus Time . . 89
R
1.3 ? Scaling Applied to Biology. . . . 59 2.7 Applications of Calculus . . . . 90
Organisms of different sizes with the same Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
10