Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Free fall. In classical mechanics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. A freely falling object may not necessarily be falling down in the vertical direction. An object moving upwards might not normally be considered to be falling, but if it is subject to only the force of gravity, it is said to be ...
In physics and engineering, a free body diagram (FBD; also called a force diagram) [1] is a graphical illustration used to visualize the applied forces, moments, and resulting reactions on a free body in a given condition. It depicts a body or connected bodies with all the applied forces and moments, and reactions, which act on the body (ies).
Torricelli's law describes the parting speed of a jet of water, based on the distance below the surface at which the jet starts, assuming no air resistance, viscosity, or other hindrance to the fluid flow. This diagram shows several such jets, vertically aligned, leaving the reservoir horizontally. In this case, the jets have an envelope (a ...
The first equation shows that, after one second, an object will have fallen a distance of 1/2 × 9.8 × 1 2 = 4.9 m. After two seconds it will have fallen 1/2 × 9.8 × 2 2 = 19.6 m; and so on. On the other hand, the penultimate equation becomes grossly inaccurate at great distances. If an object fell 10 000 m to Earth, then the results of both ...
Comparison of the antiquated view and the outcome of the experiment (size of the spheres represent their masses, not their volumes) Between 1589 and 1592, [1] the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (then professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa) is said to have dropped "unequal weights of the same material" from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to demonstrate that their time of descent was ...
v. t. e. In general relativity, a geodesic generalizes the notion of a "straight line" to curved spacetime. Importantly, the world line of a particle free from all external, non-gravitational forces is a particular type of geodesic. In other words, a freely moving or falling particle always moves along a geodesic.
Newton's first law expresses the principle of inertia: the natural behavior of a body is to move in a straight line at constant speed. A body's motion preserves the status quo, but external forces can perturb this. The modern understanding of Newton's first law is that no inertial observer is privileged over any other.
In classical mechanics, for a body with constant mass, the (vector) acceleration of the body's center of mass is proportional to the net force vector (i.e. sum of all forces) acting on it (Newton's second law): = =, where F is the net force acting on the body, m is the mass of the body, and a is the center-of-mass acceleration.