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Mechanics texts tell us that a particle in a bound orbit under gravitational central force moves on an ellipse, while introductory physics texts approximate the earth as flat, and tell us that the particle moves in a parabola. The…
We consider the motion of a particle on a surface which is a small perturbation of the standard sphere. One may qualitatively describe the motion by means of a precessing great circle of the sphere. The observation is employed to derive a…
We present a ballistic description of the propagation of the working surface of a relativistic jet. Using simple laws of conservation of mass and linear momentum at the working surface, we obtain a full description of the jet flow…
Study of the classical motion of two identical particles on a plane subject to non-Coulomb potentials in a constant magnetic field presented in polar coordinates. With the rigorous analysis of the potentials and the constants of motion, we…
I discuss the influence of adding the air resistance and the kinetic friction to the classical mechanics homework-problem: finding the motion of a body sliding down a hemispherical hill. For a physically realistic ($\propto v^2$) form of…
Experiments on the motion of a particle on an inclined rough plane have yielded some surprising results. For example, it was found that the frictional force acting on the ball is viscous, {\it i.e.} proportional to the velocity rather than…
We study multiple elastic collisions of a block and a ball against a rigid wall in one dimension. The complete trajectory of the block is solved as an analytic function of time. Near the turning point of the block the force carried by the…
We consider a mechanical system consisting of an infinite rod (a straight line) and a ball (a massless point) on the plane. The rod rotates uniformly around one of its points. The ball is reflected elastically when colliding with the rod…
Relativistic mechanics on an arbitrary manifold is formulated in the terms of jets of its one-dimensional submanifolds. A generic relativistic Lagrangian is constructed. Relativistic mechanics on a pseudo-Riemannian manifold is particularly…
We report an experimental, numerical and theoretical study of the motion of a ball on a rough inclined surface. The control parameters are $D$, the diameter of the ball, $\theta$, the inclination angle of the rough surface and $E_{ki}$, the…
We describe an example of learning with multiple representations in an A-level revision lesson on mechanics. The context of the problem involved the motion of a ball thrown vertically upwards in air and studying how the associated physical…
This paper addresses the problem of the Chaplygin ball rolling on a horizontal plane which rotates with constant angular velocity. In this case, the equations of motion admit area integrals, an integral of squared angular momentum and the…
The controlled motion of a rolling ball actuated by internal point masses that move along arbitrarily-shaped rails fixed within the ball is considered. The controlled equations of motion are solved numerically using a predictor-corrector…
In this paper we use Newton's 3rd law to deduce the simplest model of an object that can perform a standing vertical jump -- a two-segmented object with an initial constant repulsive force between the segments, followed by an abrupt…
We present a method for incorporating a stochastic point of view into physics exercises of mathematics education. The core of our method is the randomization of some inputs, the system model used does not differ from what we would use in…
Laboratory experiments on gravitation are usually performed with objects of constant density, so that the analysis of the forces concerns only the geometry of their shape. In an ideal experiment, the shapes of the constituent parts will be…
In this note, we provide explicit expressions for the projections onto the graph of a quadratic polynomial. The projections are obtained by examining the critical points of the associated quartic polynomial, that is, the roots of the cubic…
Each observable ballistic phenomenon of a spin-stabilized rifle bullet can be explained in terms of the acceleration of gravity and the total aerodynamic force acting on that bullet. In addition to the coning motion itself, Coning Theory…
This article describes four innovative pedagogical exercises: (i) The expression for relation between cross sections in the laboratory and the centre of mass systems provided in text books assumes zero or low Q values which needs to be…
A particle is thrown tangentially on a surface. It is shown that for some surfaces and for special initial velocities the thrown particle leaves immediately the surface, and for special conditions it never leaves the surface. The conditions…