System of Particles and Rotational Motion
A diver tucks in the air and spins fast, and then opens out and enters the water. A ladder leans on a wall and does not slip. A cylinder rolls down a slope faster than a ring. Up to now, we treated every body as a point. Real bodies have a size and a shape, and they can turn. In this chapter we find the one point where a body or a system behaves like a single particle, we learn what torque, moment of inertia and angular momentum are, and we use them to study spinning, balancing and rolling. Python adds up the masses, solves the equations of balance and races the rolling bodies.
Part of Physics · High School (11–12) (chapter 6)
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Centre of Mass and the Motion of a System
A shell bursts in the air into many pieces, but one point of the pieces still follows the smooth path of the shell. In this course we find the centre of mass of a system, we see why only the external forces move it, we use it to solve problems of boats, skaters and bursting shells, and we describe the turning of a rigid body with angular velocity and angular acceleration.
Torque, Moment of Inertia and Rotation About a Fixed Axis
You push a door near its hinge, and then near its handle. The same force has a very different effect. In this course we define the vector product and the torque of a force, we find the moment of inertia of bodies of different shapes, and we write the law of rotation, torque equals moment of inertia times angular acceleration, to solve problems on pulleys, wheels and swinging rods.