Related papers: Three lectures on Newton's laws
In this paper of "The Epistemology of Contemporary Physics" series we investigate Newton's third law and discuss and analyze its epistemological significance from some aspects with special attention to its relation to the principle of…
Despite its apparent simplicity, Newtonian Mechanics contains conceptual subtleties that may cause some confusion to the deep-thinking student. These subtleties concern fundamental issues such as, e.g., the number of independent laws needed…
Newtons Laws of Motion form the basis of classical mechanics, but misconceptions about their interrelationships persist in pedagogy. A prevalent misunderstanding is that Newtons First Law is a trivial consequence of the Second Law. This…
Most of the logical objections against the classical laws of motion, as they are usually presented in textbooks, centre on the fact that defining force in terms of mass and acceleration, the first two laws are mere assertions of concepts to…
This contribution analyses the classical laws of motion by means of an approach relating time and entropy. We argue that adopting the notion of change of states as opposed to the usual derivation of Newton's laws in terms of fields a…
We investigated students' use of Newton's second law in mechanics and electromagnetism contexts by interviewing students in a two-semester calculus-based physics course. We observed that students' responses are consistent with three mental…
According to Newton's law of gravitation the force between two particles depends upon their inertial, as well as their active and passive gravitational masses. For ordinary matter all three of these are equal and positive. We consider here…
Despite its apparent complexity, our world seems to be governed by simple laws of physics. This volume provides a philosophical introduction to such laws. I explain how they are connected to some of the central issues in philosophy, such as…
I discuss the main features of the concept of law in physics. Fundamental laws from Newtonian mechanics to general relativity are reviewed. I end with an outlook on the new form of laws in the emerging theory of quantum gravity.
In this paper, we point out that there are at lest six theorems in physics sharing common virtue of Pythagoras theorem, so that it is possible to string these theorems together with the Pythagoras theorem for physics teaching, the six…
These lecture notes are based on a set of six lectures that I gave in Edinburgh in 2008/2009 and they cover some topics in the interface between Geometry and Physics. They involve some unsolved problems and conjectures and I hope they may…
I discuss the physical basis of classical mechanics, such as expressed commonly using the framework of Newton's Principia. Newton's formulation of the laws of motion is seen to have quite a few ambiguities and shortcomings. Therefore I…
The principles of creation of the mechanics of structured particles in the frame of the Newton's laws are considered. The explanation how this mechanics leads to the account of dissipative forces is offered. Why the motions of the system…
This book includes my lectures, together with their problem sets and solutions, on 1) classical mechanics (one semester), 2) thermodynamics and statistical mechanics (one semester), and 3) quantum mechanics (one semester), which I have been…
In teaching the physical sciences, a significant challenge lies in the student's tendency to consider the scientific world and the "real" world as separate. For example, Newton's 1st Law of Motion states that an object in motion remains in…
The laws of quantum mechanics are couched in subtle mathematical language. The laws are not usually stated in a compact pedagogical form. Here I present a possible way to correct this. Essential facts can be distilled into seven statements…
Newton's third law is one of the most important concepts learned early in introductory mechanics courses; however, ample studies have documented a wide range of students' misconceptions and fragmented understandings of this concept that are…
This manuscript summarizes a series of three lectures on interactions of neutrinos . The lectures begin with a pedagogical foundation and then explore topics of interest to current and future neutrino oscillation and cross-section…
These lecture notes were prepared as a basic introduction to the theory of constrained systems which is how the fundamental forces of nature appear in their Hamiltonian formulation. Only a working knowledge of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian…
The goal of these lectures is to introduce readers with a basic knowledge of undergraduate physics (specifically non-relativistic quantum mechanics, special relativity, and electromagnetism) to the `current theory of everything': the…