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 picture info Speed In everyday use and in kinematics, the speed of an object is the magnitude of its velocity (the rate of change of its position); it is thus a scalar quantity. The average speed of an object in an interval of time is the distance travelled by the object divided by the duration of the interval; the instantaneous speed is the limit of the average speed as the duration of the time interval approaches zero. Speed has the dimensions of distance divided by time. The SI unit of speed is the metre per second, but the most common unit of speed in everyday usage is the kilometre per hour or, in the US and the UK, miles per hour [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] picture info Statistical Mechanics Statistical mechanics is a branch of theoretical physics that uses probability theory to study the average behaviour of a mechanical system whose exact state is uncertain. Statistical mechanics is commonly used to explain the thermodynamic behaviour of large systems. This branch of statistical mechanics, which treats and extends classical thermodynamics, is known as statistical thermodynamics or equilibrium statistical mechanics. Microscopic mechanical laws do not contain concepts such as temperature, heat, or entropy; however, statistical mechanics shows how these concepts arise from the natural uncertainty about the state of a system when that system is prepared in practice [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] Slowness (other) Slow, SLOW or Slowness may refer to: picture info SI Unit The International System of Units (SI, abbreviated from the French Système international (d'unités)) is the modern form of the metric system, and is the most widely used system of measurement. It comprises a coherent system of units of measurement built on seven base units (ampere, kelvin, second, metre, kilogram, candela, mole) and a set of twenty decimal prefixes to the unit names and unit symbols that may be used when specifying multiples and fractions of the units. The system also specifies names for 22 derived units for other common physical quantities like lumen, watt, etc. The base units, except for one, are derived from invariant constants of nature, such as the speed of light and the triple point of water, which can be observed and measured with great accuracy [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] Slow (other) Slow, SLOW or Slowness may refer to: picture info Distance Distance is a numerical measurement of how far apart objects are. In physics or everyday usage, distance may refer to a physical length or an estimation based on other criteria (e.g. "two counties over"). In most cases, "distance from A to B" is interchangeable with "distance from B to A". In mathematics, a distance function or metric is a generalization of the concept of physical distance [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] picture info Potential Energy In physics, potential energy is the energy held by an object because of its position relative to other objects, stresses within itself, its electric charge, or other factors. Common types of potential energy include the gravitational potential energy of an object that depends on its mass and its distance from the center of mass of another object, the elastic potential energy of an extended spring, and the electric potential energy of an electric charge in an electric field [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] Udwadia–Kalaba Equation In theoretical physics, the Udwadia–Kalaba equation is a method for deriving the equations of motion of a constrained mechanical system. This equation was discovered by Firdaus E. Udwadia and Robert E. Kalaba in 1992. The fundamental equation is the simplest and most comprehensive equation so far discovered for writing down the equations of motion of a constrained mechanical system. It makes a convenient distinction between externally applied forces and the internal forces of constraint, similar to the use of constraints in Lagrangian mechanics, but without the use of Lagrange multipliers. The Udwadia–Kalaba equation applies to a wide class of constraints, both holonomic constraints and nonholonomic ones, as long as they are linear with respect to the accelerations [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] picture info Virtual Work Virtual work arises in the application of the principle of least action to the study of forces and movement of a mechanical system. The work of a force acting on a particle as it moves along a displacement will be different for different displacements. Among all the possible displacements that a particle may follow, called virtual displacements, one will minimize the action. This displacement is therefore the displacement followed by the particle according to the principle of least action [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] picture info Koopman–von Neumann Classical Mechanics The Koopman–von Neumann mechanics is a description of classical mechanics in terms of Hilbert space, introduced by Bernard Koopman and John von Neumann in 1931 and 1932. As Koopman and von Neumann demonstrated, a Hilbert space of complex, [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] Appell's Equation Of Motion In classical mechanics, Appell's equation of motion (aka Gibbs-Appell equation of motion) is an alternative general formulation of classical mechanics described by Paul Émile Appell in 1900 and Josiah Willard Gibbs in 1879 ${\displaystyle Q_{r}={\fra [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] picture info Analytical Mechanics In theoretical physics and mathematical physics, analytical mechanics, or theoretical mechanics is a collection of closely related alternative formulations of classical mechanics. It was developed by many scientists and mathematicians during the 18th century and onward, after Newtonian mechanics. Since Newtonian mechanics considers vector quantities of motion, particularly accelerations, momenta, forces, of the constituents of the system, an alternative name for the mechanics governed by Newton's laws and Euler's laws is vectorial mechanics. By contrast, analytical mechanics uses scalar properties of motion representing the system as a whole—usually its total kinetic energy and potential energy—not Newton's vectorial forces of individual particles. A scalar is a quantity, whereas a vector is represented by quantity and direction [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] picture info D'Alembert's Principle D'Alembert's principle, also known as the Lagrange–d'Alembert principle, is a statement of the fundamental classical laws of motion. It is named after its discoverer, the French physicist and mathematician Jean le Rond d'Alembert. It is the dynamic analogue to the principle of virtual work for applied forces in a static system and in fact is more general than Hamilton's principle, avoiding restriction to holonomic systems. A holonomic constraint depends only on the coordinates and time. It does not depend on the velocities [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] picture info Couple (mechanics) In mechanics, a couple is a system of forces with a resultant (a.k.a. net or sum) moment but no resultant force. A better term is force couple or pure moment. Its effect is to create rotation without translation, or more generally without any acceleration of the centre of mass. In rigid body mechanics, force couples are free vectors, meaning their effects on a body are independent of the point of application. The resultant moment of a couple is called a torque. This is not to be confused with the term torque as it is used in physics, where it is merely a synonym of moment. Instead, torque is a special case of moment [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] picture info Lagrangian Mechanics Lagrangian mechanics is a reformulation of classical mechanics, introduced by the Italian-French mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1788. In Lagrangian mechanics, the trajectory of a system of particles is derived by solving the Lagrange equations in one of two forms, either the Lagrange equations of the first kind, which treat constraints explicitly as extra equations, often using Lagrange multipliers; or the Lagrange equations of the second kind, which incorporate the constraints directly by judicious choice of generalized coordinates. In each case, a mathematical function called the Lagrangian is a function of the generalized coordinates, their time derivatives, and time, and contains the information about the dynamics of the system. No new views on physics are necessarily introduced in applying Lagrangian mechanics compared to Newtonian mechanics [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...] picture info Damping In engineering, the damping ratio is a dimensionless measure describing how oscillations in a system decay after a disturbance. Many systems exhibit oscillatory behavior when they are disturbed from their position of static equilibrium. A mass suspended from a spring, for example, might, if pulled and released, bounce up and down. On each bounce, the system is trying to return to its equilibrium position, but overshoots it. Sometimes losses (e.g. frictional) damp the system and can cause the oscillations to gradually decay in amplitude towards zero or attenuate [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]