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Newton's laws are often stated in terms of point or particle masses, that is, bodies whose volume is negligible. This is a reasonable approximation for real bodies when the motion of internal parts can be neglected, and when the separation between bodies is much larger than the size of each.
Inertia is the natural tendency of objects in motion to stay in motion and objects at rest to stay at rest, unless a force causes the velocity to change. It is one of the fundamental principles in classical physics, and described by Isaac Newton in his first law of motion (also known as The Principle of Inertia). [1]
All frames of reference with zero acceleration are in a state of constant rectilinear motion (straight-line motion) with respect to one another. In such a frame, an object with zero net force acting on it, is perceived to move with a constant velocity , or, equivalently, Newton's first law of motion holds.
Classical mechanics was traditionally divided into three main branches. Statics is the branch of classical mechanics that is concerned with the analysis of force and torque acting on a physical system that does not experience an acceleration, but rather is in equilibrium with its environment. [3]
Newton's law of motion for a particle of mass m written in vector form is: = , where F is the vector sum of the physical forces applied to the particle and a is the absolute acceleration (that is, acceleration in an inertial frame) of the particle, given by: = , where r is the position vector of the particle (not to be confused with radius, as ...
The equivalence principle is the hypothesis that the observed equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass is a consequence of nature. The weak form, known for centuries, relates to masses of any composition in free fall taking the same trajectories and landing at identical times.
One can also speak of the motion of images, shapes, and boundaries. In general, the term motion signifies a continuous change in the position or configuration of a physical system in space. For example, one can talk about the motion of a wave or the motion of a quantum particle, where the configuration consists of the probabilities of the wave ...
The Buridan impetus theory developed one of the most important thought experiments in the history of science, the 'tunnel-experiment'. This experiment incorporated oscillatory and pendulum motion into dynamical analysis and the science of motion for the first time. It also established one of the important principles of classical mechanics.