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Some of the major unsolved problems in physics are theoretical, meaning that existing theories seem incapable of explaining a certain observed phenomenon or experimental result. The others are experimental, meaning that there is a difficulty in creating an experiment to test a proposed theory or investigate a phenomenon in greater detail.
The three-body problem is a special case of the n-body problem, which describes how n objects move under one of the physical forces, such as gravity. These problems have a global analytical solution in the form of a convergent power series, as was proven by Karl F. Sundman for n = 3 and by Qiudong Wang for n > 3 (see n-body problem for details
Fermat's equation, x n + y n = z n with positive integer solutions, is an example of a Diophantine equation, [22] named for the 3rd-century Alexandrian mathematician, Diophantus, who studied them and developed methods for the solution of some kinds of Diophantine equations. A typical Diophantine problem is to find two integers x and y such that ...
Fermi problem. A Fermi problem (or Fermi quiz, Fermi question, Fermi estimate), also known as a order-of-magnitude problem (or order-of-magnitude estimate, order estimation), is an estimation problem in physics or engineering education, designed to teach dimensional analysis or approximation of extreme scientific calculations.
There are two main descriptions of motion: dynamics and kinematics.Dynamics is general, since the momenta, forces and energy of the particles are taken into account. In this instance, sometimes the term dynamics refers to the differential equations that the system satisfies (e.g., Newton's second law or Euler–Lagrange equations), and sometimes to the solutions to those equations.
In science, work is the energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement. In its simplest form, for a constant force aligned with the direction of motion, the work equals the product of the force strength and the distance traveled. A force is said to do positive work if it has a component in the ...
Euler's three-body problem is to describe the motion of a particle under the influence of two centers that attract the particle with central forces that decrease with distance as an inverse-square law, such as Newtonian gravity or Coulomb's law. Examples of Euler's problem include an electron moving in the electric field of two nuclei, such as ...
Lagrangian. [edit] Instead of forces, Lagrangian mechanics uses the energies in the system. The central quantity of Lagrangian mechanics is the Lagrangian, a function which summarizes the dynamics of the entire system. Overall, the Lagrangian has units of energy, but no single expression for all physical systems.