Physics

STATICS

Buoyancy

CONCEPT The principle of buoyancy holds that the buoyant or lifting force of an object submerged in a fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid it has displaced. The concept is also known as Archimedes’s principle, after the Greek mathematician, physicist, and inventor Archimedes (c. 287-212 B.C.), who discovered it. Applications of Archimedes’s […]

Bernoulli's Principle

CONCEPT Bernoulli’s principle, sometimes known as Bernoulli’s equation, holds that for fluids in an ideal state, pressure and density are inversely related: in other words, a slow-moving fluid exerts more pressure than a fast-moving fluid. Since “fluid” in this context applies equally to liquids and gases, the principle has as many applications with regard to […]

Aerodynamics

CONCEPT Though the term “aerodynamics” is most commonly associated with airplanes and the overall science of flight, in fact, its application is much broader. Simply put, aerodynamics is the study of airflow and its principles, and applied aerodynamics is the science of improving manmade objects such as airplanes and automobiles in light of those principles. […]

FLUID MECHANICS

CONCEPT The term “fluid” in everyday language typically refers only to liquids, but in the realm of physics, fluid describes any gas or liquid that conforms to the shape of its container. Fluid mechanics is the study of gases and liquids at rest and in motion. This area of physics is divided into fluid statics, […]

FLUID MECHANICS

Torque

CONCEPT Torque is the application of force where there is rotational motion. The most obvious example of torque in action is the operation of a crescent wrench loosening a lug nut, and a close second is a playground seesaw. But torque is also crucial to the operation of gyroscopes for navigation, and of various motors, […]

Projectile Motion

CONCEPT A projectile is any object that has been thrown, shot, or launched, and ballistics is the study of projectile motion. Examples of projectiles range from a golf ball in flight, to a curve ball thrown by a baseball pitcher to a rocket fired into space. The flight paths of all projectiles are affected by […]

Gravity and Gravitation

CONCEPT Gravity is, quite simply, the force that holds together the universe. People are accustomed to thinking of it purely in terms of the gravitational pull Earth exerts on smaller bodies—a stone, a human being, even the Moon—or perhaps in terms of the Sun’s gravitational pull on Earth. In fact, everything exerts a gravitational attraction […]

Laws of Motion

CONCEPT In all the universe, there are few ideas more fundamental than those expressed in the three laws of motion. Together these explain why it is relatively difficult to start moving, and then to stop moving; how much force is needed to start or stop in a given situation; and how one force relates to […]

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