Consider a coffee mug hanging on a hook in a pantry. If the mug gets knocked, it oscillates back and forth like a pendulum until the oscillations die out.
A simple pendulum can be described as a point mass and a string. Meanwhile, a physical pendulum is any object whose oscillations are similar to a simple pendulum, but cannot be modeled as a point mass on a string because its mass is distributed over a larger area. The behavior of a physical pendulum can be modeled using the principles of...

Acceleration is in the direction of the change in velocity, but it is not always in the direction of motion. When an object slows down, its acceleration is opposite to the direction of its motion. Although commonly referred to as deceleration, this causes confusion in our analysis as deceleration is not a vector, and does not point to a specific direction with respect to a coordinate system. Therefore, the term deceleration is not used. For example, when a subway train slows down, it...

In everyday conversation, accelerating means speeding up. Acceleration is a vector in the same direction as the change in velocity, Δv, therefore the greater the acceleration, the greater the change in velocity over a given time. Since velocity is a vector, it can change in magnitude, direction, or both. Thus acceleration is a change in speed or direction, or both. For example, if a runner traveling at 10 km/h due east slows to a stop, reverses direction, and continues their run at 10 km/h due...

The importance of understanding acceleration spans our day-to-day experiences, as well as the vast reaches of outer space and the tiny world of subatomic physics. In everyday conversation, to accelerate means to speed up. For instance, we are familiar with the acceleration of our car; the harder we apply our foot to the gas pedal, the faster we accelerate. The greater the acceleration, the greater the change in velocity over a given time. Acceleration is widely seen in experimental physics. In...

Velocity and position can be calculated from the known function of acceleration as a function of time. The total area under the acceleration-time graph and the velocity-time graph gives the change in velocity and position, respectively. In the case of an airplane, its acceleration is tracked using the inertial navigation system. The pilot provides the input of the airplane's initial position and velocity before takeoff. The inertial navigation system then uses the acceleration data to calculate...

A slider-crank mechanism converts rotational motion from the crank into linear motion of the slider or vice versa. This mechanism consists of three main parts: the crank, the connecting rod, and the slider. The movement of the slider-crank is an example of general plane motion as the fluctuating angle between the crank and the connecting rod. Consider a segment AB where point A is at the end of the slider and point B is on the diametrically opposite end to point A, on a crack. The variance in...