Classical mechanics

Physics

Physics is the science of matter and its motion, as well as space and time — the science that deals with concepts such as force, energy, mass, and charge. Physics is an experimental science; it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the world around us behaves.

Advances in physics often translate to the technological sector, and sometimes influence the other sciences, as well as mathematics and philosophy. For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism have led to the widespread use of electrically driven devices (televisions, computers, home appliances etc.); advances in thermodynamics led to the development of motorized transport; and advances in mechanics led to the development of calculus, quantum chemistry, and the use of instruments such as the electron microscope in microbiology.

Today, physics is a broad and highly developed subject. Research is often divided into four subfields: condensed matter physics; atomic, molecular, and optical physics; high-energy physics; and astronomy and astrophysics. Most physicists also specialize in either theoretical or experimental research, the former dealing with the development of new theories, and the latter dealing with the experimental testing of theories and the discovery of new phenomena.

Core theories

Although physics encompasses a wide variety of phenomena, the core theories of physics are classical mechanics, electromagnetism (including optics), relativity, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics. Each of these theories has been tested in numerous experiments and proven to be an accurate model of nature within its domain of validity. For example, classical mechanics correctly describes the motion of objects in everyday experience, but it breaks down at the atomic scale, where it is superseded by quantum mechanics, and at speeds approaching the speed of light, where relativistic effects become important. While these theories have long been well-understood, they continue to be areas of active research — for example, a remarkable aspect of classical mechanics known as chaos theory was developed in the 20th century, three centuries after the original formulation of mechanics by Isaac Newton (1642–1727). The basic theories form a foundation for the study and research of more specialized topics.

Classical mechanics

Classical mechanics is a model of the physics of forces acting upon bodies. It is often referred to as "Newtonian mechanics" after Isaac Newton and his laws of motion. Mechanics is subdivided into statics, which models objects at rest, kinematics, which models objects in motion, and dynamics, which models objects subjected to forces. The classical mechanics of continuous and deformable objects is continuum mechanics, which can itself be broken down into solid mechanics and fluid mechanics according to the state of matter being studied. The latter, the mechanics of liquids and gases, includes hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, pneumatics, aerodynamics, and other fields.

Classical mechanics produces accurate results within the domain of everyday experience. It is superseded by relativistic mechanics for systems moving at large velocities near the speed of light, quantum mechanics for systems at small distance scales, and relativistic quantum field theory for systems with both properties. Nevertheless, classical mechanics is still useful, because it is much simpler and easier to apply than these other theories, and it has a very large range of approximate validity. Classical mechanics can be used to describe the motion of human-sized objects (such as tops and baseballs), many astronomical objects (such as planets and galaxies), and certain microscopic objects (such as organic molecules).

An important concept of mechanics is the identification of conserved energy and momentum, which lead to the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian reformulations of Newton's laws. Theories such as fluid mechanics and the kinetic theory of gases result from applying classical mechanics to macroscopic systems. A relatively recent result of considerations concerning the dynamics of nonlinear systems is chaos theory, the study of systems in which small changes in a variable may have large effects. Newton's law of universal gravitation, formulated within classical mechanics, explained Kepler's laws of planetary motion and helped make classical mechanics an important element of the Scientific Revolution.

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