What Is Physics
What Is Physics
Inertia
Gravitational Force and the Law of Universal
- Property of matter that causes it to resist a change in
Gravitation
its state of motion.
-Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy in 1564
- The measure of the object's inertia is its mass.
-The first person to conclude that all falling objects,
regardless of their masses, will fall with constant
Vector Quantities
acceleration.
-Physical quantities that have specified magnitude and
Gravitational Force and the Law of Universal
direction.
Gravitation
-The word "vector" comes from the Latin “vehere”,
-Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation states that the
which means "to carry".
attractive gravitational force between two masses is
directly proportional to the product of the two masses
Examples of Scalar and Vector quantities
(m1 and m2) and inversely proportional to the square
Scalar Quantities Vector Quantities
of the distance, r, them.
Mass Acceleration
Speed Velocity
F = G(m1m2)/
Distance Displacement
Friction
Temperature Force
-Friction is a force that tends to oppose the motion or
Volume Momentum
impending motion. It is a force that has a direction
The Laws of Motion opposite to the direction of motion or of the
-Sir Isaac Newton, in 1687 produced the Principia. impending motion and is present whenever there are
-It was in this publication that he summarized the two surfaces that are in contact with each other.
different properties of motion, now called Newton's -Friction will never create motion, it will just resist
Laws of Motion. motion.
Kinetic Friction
-It is friction that is acting between surfaces that are in -Energy is the capacity to do work.
relative motion. This is also called sliding friction. -Work is the product of the force applied to an object
and the displacement through which the force acts on
an object.
F t=m V
Reflection
Simple Harmonic Motion Reflection is the bouncing off of a wave as it hits a
-A special type of vibratory or periodic motion. barrier.
-For SHM, the acceleration of the object is Law of Reflection
proportional to its position and is oppositely directed The angle that the wave hits the barrier should be
to the displacement from equilibrium. equal to the angle at which it bounces off the barrier.
Waves
Refraction
-Refraction is the change in direction of a wave as it -Doppler Effect refers to the variation of the pitch
travels from one medium to a different medium. heard from a moving source of sound or by a
-Every medium or material has a property known as moving observer.
the index of refraction. It is the ratio of the speed of -Also known as the Doppler shift and was named
light in free space to the velocity of the wave in the after Christian Andreas Doppler (1803-1853)
actual medium.
Snell's Law
-Also known as the Law of Refraction. Light
-It states that the ratio of the sines of the angles of -Light is the aspect of radiant energy of which an
incidence and the angle of refraction is a constant observer is visually aware.
that depends on the ratio of the indices of both -The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458
media. m/s or approximately 3 x 10^8 m/s.
-Named after Dutch astronomer and mathematician
named Willebrord Snellius.
Plane Mirrors
-Plane mirrors are the simplest mirrors around.
-These are flat surfaces that reflect a beam of light
in one direction instead of either scattering it
widely in many directions or absorbing it.
Sound
-Sound is a mechanical wave that carries disturbances
from one location to another through a certain
medium.
-Sound is classified as a longitudinal wave since
particles of the medium through which the sound
moves vibrate parallel to the direction of the sound.
Spherical Mirrors
-In a spherical mirror, the reflecting surface is a
Frequency and Pitch section of a sphere.
For sound, the particles of the medium that moves
back and forth will determine its frequency.
1 Hertz = 1 vibration per second
Infrasound = sound frequencies below 20 Hz
Audible Sound = 20 Hz to 20 kHz
Ultrasound = beyond 20 kHz
Speed of Sound
-The speed of the sound wave is the rate at which the
disturbance in the medium is carried on from one Convex Mirror
particle to the next. -A convex mirror is a curved mirror where the
-There are different factors that can affect the speed reflective surface bulges out toward the light source.
of sound: -It is also called a diverging mirror since the reflection
Properties of medium of a set of parallel rays is a set of diverging rays.
Phase of medium
The Doppler Effect
-A converging lens makes a set of parallel rays
divergent after refraction.
-It forms a virtual image of any object. The position,
size and nature of an image can be determined by the
use of the lens equation.
Concave Mirror
-A concave mirror has a reflective surface that is
curved inward and away from the light source.
-It is also called a converging mirror since it makes
parallel rays converge to a point.
Thin Lenses
-A piece of glass of finite thickness with two spherical
boundaries is a lens.
-If the thickness of the lens is much smaller than the
diameter of the lens, we call it a thin lens.
-Thin lenses can be converging or diverging.
Converging Lens
-A converging lens makes a set of parallel rays
converge after refraction.
-It forms real images when the object is farther from
the lens than the principal focus and virtual images
when the object is between the lens and the principal
focus.
Diverging Lens