What are the Branches of Mechanics?

The Branches of mechanics More developed and known are static, dynamic or kinetic and kinematics. Together they form an area of ​​science related to the behavior of bodily entities at the moment of being pushed by powers or landslides.

Likewise, mechanics studies the consequences of bodily entities in their environment. Scientific discipline has its origins in ancient Greece with the writings of Aristotle and Archimedes.

Representation of the branches of mechanics

During the early modern period, some renowned scientists such as Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei settled what is now known as classical mechanics.

Is a Branch of classical physics Which deals with atoms that are immobile or which precipitate slowly, at speeds evidently lower than the speed of light.

Historically, classical mechanics came first, while quantum mechanics is a relatively recent invention.

The classical mechanics originated with the laws of the movement of Isaac Newton While quantum mechanics was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century.

The importance of mechanics lies in the fact that, whether classical or quantum, it is the truest knowledge that exists about physical nature and has been especially seen as a model for other so-called exact sciences such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology.

Main branches of mechanics

Mechanics have a lot of uses in the modern world. Its variety of areas of study has led it to diversify to include the compression of different subjects that underlie of other disciplines. Below are the main branches of mechanics.

Static

Statics, in physics, is the branch of mechanics that is in charge of the powers that operate in immobile body entities under conditions of equilibrium.

Its foundations were established more than 2,200 years ago by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes And others, while studying the amplification characteristics of simple machine forces such as the lever and the shaft.

The methods and results of static science have proven to be especially useful in the design of buildings, bridges and dams, as well as cranes and other similar mechanical devices.

In order to calculate the dimensions of such structures and machines, architects and engineers must first determine the powers involved in their interconnected parts.

  • Conditions of static

  1. Static provides the analytical and graphing procedures needed to identify and describe these unknown forces.
  2. The static means that the bodies with which it treats are perfectly rigid.
  3. He also argues that the addition of all powers operating in a resting entity must be zero and that there must be no tendency for the forces to rotate the body around any axis.

These three conditions are independent of each other and their expression in mathematical form comprises equilibrium equations. There are three equations, so only three unknown forces can be calculated.

If there are more than three unknown forces, it means that there are more components in the structure or machine that are required to withstand the loads applied or that there are more restrictions than are needed to prevent the body from moving.

Such unnecessary components or constraints are called redundant (for example, a four-legged table has a redundant leg) and the force method is said to be statically indeterminate.

Dynamic or kinetic

Dynamics is the branch of physical science and subdivision of mechanics that dominates the study of the movement of material objects in relation to the physical factors that affect them: force, mass, momentum, energy.

Kinetics is the branch of classical mechanics that refers to the effect of forces and pairs on the motion of bodies having mass.

Authors who use the term"kinetics"apply dynamics to the classical mechanics of moving bodies. This contrasts with static, which refers to bodies at rest, under conditions of equilibrium.

They include, in dynamics or kinetics, the description of motion in terms of position, speed and acceleration, apart from the influence of forces, pairs and masses.

The authors who do not use the kinetic term divide classical mechanics into kinematics and dynamics, including static as a special case of dynamics in which the addition of forces and the sum of the pairs are equal to zero.

You may be interested 10 Examples of Kinetic Energy in Daily Life .

Kinematics

Kinematics is a branch of physics and a subdivision of classical mechanics related to the geometrically possible movement of a body or system of bodies without considering the forces involved, that is, causes and effects of movements.

Kinematics aims to provide a description of the spatial position of the bodies or systems of particles of material, the velocity at which particles move (velocity) and the speed at which their velocity is changing (acceleration).

When causal forces are ignored, motion descriptions are only possible for particles that have restricted motion, that is, they move in certain paths. In the movement without restrictions, or free, forces determine the shape of the road.

For a particle moving on a straight path, a list of corresponding positions and times would constitute a suitable scheme for describing the motion of the particle.

A continuous description would require a mathematical formula expressing the position in terms of time.

When a particle moves on a curved path, the description of its position becomes more complicated and requires two or three dimensions.

In such cases, continuous descriptions in the form of a single graph or mathematical formula are not feasible.

  • Example of kinematics

The position of a particle moving on a circle, for example, can be described by a rotating radius of the circle, such as the ray of a wheel with a fixed end in the center of the circle and the other end attached to the particle.

The radius of rotation is known as the position vector for the particle and, if we know the angle between it and a fixed radius as a function of time, we can calculate the magnitude of velocity and acceleration of the particle.

However, speed and acceleration have direction and magnitude. The velocity is always tangent to the trajectory, whereas the acceleration has two components, one tangent to the trajectory and the other perpendicular to the tangent.

References

  1. Beer, F.P. & Johnston Jr, E.R. (1992). Statics and Mechanics of Materials. McGraw-Hill, Inc.
  2. Dugas, Rene. A History of Classical Mechanics. New York, NY: Dover Publications Inc, 1988, pg 19.
  3. David L. Goodstein. (2015). Mechanics. 04 August, 2017, of Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Website: britannica.com.
  4. The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. (2013). Kinematics. 04 August, 2017, of Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Website: britannica.com.
  5. The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. (2016). Kinetics. 04 August, 2017, of Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Website: britannica.com.
  6. The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. (2014). Statics. 04 August, 2017, of Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Website: britannica.com.
  7. Rana, N.C., and Joag, P.S. Classical Mechanics. West Patel Nagar, New Delhi. Tata McGraw-Hill, 1991, pg.


Loading ..

Recent Posts

Loading ..