General Physics I (Mechanics)

At the end of this course, students should be able to: 1. identify and deduce the physical quantities and their units; 2. differentiate between vectors and scalars; 3. describe and evaluate motion of systems on the basis of the fundamental laws of mechanics; 4. apply Newton’s laws to describe and solve simple problems of motion; 5. evaluate work, energy, velocity, momentum, acceleration, and torque of moving or rotating objects; 6. explain and apply the principles of conservation of energy, linear and angular momentum; 7. describe the laws governing motion under gravity; and 8. explain motion under gravity and quantitatively determine behaviour of objects moving under gravity.

Space and Time, Frames of Reference, Invariance of physical laws, Relativity of simultaneity, Relativity of time intervals, relativity of length, units and dimension; standards and units, unit consistency and conversions. Kinematics, Vectors and vector addition, Components of vectors, Unit vectors, Products of vectors. Displacement, Time and average velocity, instantaneous velocity, average acceleration, motion with constant acceleration, freely falling bodies, position and velocity vectors, acceleration vector, projectile motion. Motion in a circle and Relative velocity. Fundamental laws of mechanics: forces and interactions, Newton’s first law, Newton’s second law, Mass and weight, Newton’s third law. Statics and dynamics: application of Newton’s laws, dynamics of particles, frictional forces, dynamics of circular motion. Galilean invariance, universal gravitation, gravitational potential energy, elastic potential energy, conservative and non- conservative forces. Work and energy, kinetic energy and the work-energy theorem, power, momentum and impulse, conservation of momentum, collisions and momentum conservation, elastic collisions, centre of Mass. Rotational dynamics and angular momentum, angular velocity and acceleration, energy in rotational motion, parallel axis theorem, torque, torque and rotation about a moving axis, simple harmonic motion and its applications. The simple pendulum, damped oscillations, forced oscillations and resonance.