PHY 101
General Physics I (Mechanics)
2
Course Description
On completion, the 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.
Course Outline
Space and time; units and dimension, vectors and scalars, differentiation of vectors:
displacement, velocity and acceleration; kinematics; Newton’s laws of motion (inertial frames,
impulse, force and action at a distance, momentum conservation); relative motion; application
of Newtonian mechanics; equations of motion; conservation principles in physics,
conservative forces, conservation of linear momentum, kinetic energy and work, potential
energy, system of particles, centre of mass; rotational motion; torque, vector product,
moment, rotation of coordinate axes and angular momentum. Polar coordinates; conservation
of angular momentum; circular motion; moments of inertia, gyroscopes and precession;
gravitation: Newton’s law of gravitation, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, gravitational
potential energy, escape velocity, satellites motion and orbits.