Mechanics

mechanics, science concerned with the motion of bodies under the action of forces, including the special case in which a body remains at rest. Of first concern in the problem of motion are the forces that bodies exert on one another. This leads to the study of such topics as gravity, electricity, and magnetism, according to the nature of the forces involved. Given the forces, one can seek the manner in which bodies move under the action of forces; this is the subject matter of mechanics proper.

Historically, mechanics was among the first of the exact sciences to be developed. Its internal beauty as a mathematical discipline and its early remarkable success in accounting in quantitative detail for the motions of the Moon, Earth, and other planetary bodies had enormous influence on philosophical thought and provided impetus for the systematic development of science.

Mechanics may be divided into three branches: statics, which deals with forces acting on and in a body at rest; kinematics, which describes the possible motions of a body or system of bodies; and kinetics, which attempts to explain or predict the motion that will occur in a given situation. Alternatively, mechanics may be divided according to the kind of system studied. The simplest mechanical system is the particle, defined as a body so small that its shape and internal structure are of no consequence in the given problem. More complicated is the motion of a system of two or more particles that exert forces on one another and possibly undergo forces exerted by bodies outside of the system.

The principles of mechanics have been applied to three general realms of phenomena. The motions of such celestial bodies as stars, planets, and satellites can be predicted with great accuracy thousands of years before they occur. (The theory of relativity predicts some deviations from the motion according to classical, or Newtonian, mechanics; however, these are so small as to be observable only with very accurate techniques, except in problems involving all or a large portion of the detectable universe.) As the second realm, ordinary objects on Earth down to microscopic size (moving at speeds much lower than that of light) are properly described by classical mechanics without significant corrections. The engineer who designs bridges or aircraft may use the Newtonian laws of classical mechanics with confidence, even though the forces may be very complicated, and the calculations lack the beautiful simplicity of celestial mechanics. The third realm of phenomena comprises the behaviour of matter and electromagnetic radiation on the atomic and subatomic scale. Although there were some limited early successes in describing the behaviour of atoms in terms of classical mechanics, these phenomena are properly treated in quantum mechanics.

Classical mechanics deals with the motion of bodies under the influence of forces or with the equilibrium of bodies when all forces are balanced. The subject may be thought of as the elaboration and application of basic postulates first enunciated by Isaac Newton in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), commonly known as the Principia. These postulates, called Newton’s laws of motion, are set forth below. They may be used to predict with great precision a wide variety of phenomena ranging from the motion of individual particles to the interactions of highly complex systems. A variety of these applications are discussed in this article.

In the framework of modern physics, classical mechanics can be understood to be an approximation arising out of the more profound laws of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. However, that view of the subject’s place greatly undervalues its importance in forming the context, language, and intuition of modern science and scientists. Our present-day view of the world and man’s place in it is firmly rooted in classical mechanics. Moreover, many ideas and results of classical mechanics survive and play an important part in the new physics.

The central concepts in classical mechanics are force, mass, and motion. Neither force nor mass is very clearly defined by Newton, and both have been the subject of much philosophical speculation since Newton. Both of them are best known by their effects. Mass is a measure of the tendency of a body to resist changes in its state of motion. Forces, on the other hand, accelerate bodies, which is to say, they change the state of motion of bodies to which they are applied. The interplay of these effects is the principal theme of classical mechanics.

Although Newton’s laws focus attention on force and mass, three other quantities take on special importance because their total amount never changes. These three quantities are energy, (linear) momentum, and angular momentum. Any one of these can be shifted from one body or system of bodies to another. In addition, energy may change form while associated with a single system, appearing as kinetic energy, the energy of motion; potential energy, the energy of position; heat, or internal energy, associated with the random motions of the atoms or molecules composing any real body; or any combination of the three. Nevertheless, the total energy, momentum, and angular momentum in the universe never changes. This fact is expressed in physics by saying that energy, momentum, and angular momentum are conserved. These three conservation laws arise out of Newton’s laws, but Newton himself did not express them. They had to be discovered later.

It is a remarkable fact that, although Newton’s laws are no longer considered to be fundamental, nor even exactly correct, the three conservation laws derived from Newton’s laws—the conservation of energy, momentum, and angular momentum—remain exactly true even in quantum mechanics and relativity. In fact, in modern physics, force is no longer a central concept, and mass is only one of a number of attributes of matter. Energy, momentum, and angular momentum, however, still firmly hold centre stage. The continuing importance of these ideas inherited from classical mechanics may help to explain why this subject retains such great importance in science today.