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e. In science, work is the energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement. In its simplest form, for a constant force aligned with the direction of motion, the work equals the product of the force strength and the distance traveled. A force is said to do positive work if it has a component in the ...
Virtual work is the total work done by the applied forces and the inertial forces of a mechanical system as it moves through a set of virtual displacements. When considering forces applied to a body in static equilibrium, the principle of least action requires the virtual work of these forces to be zero.
The concepts invoked in Newton's laws of motion — mass, velocity, momentum, force — have predecessors in earlier work, and the content of Newtonian physics was further developed after Newton's time. Newton combined knowledge of celestial motions with the study of events on Earth and showed that one theory of mechanics could encompass both.
Fermi problem. In physics or engineering education, a Fermi problem (or Fermi quiz, Fermi question, Fermi estimate ), also known as a order-of-magnitude problem (or order-of-magnitude estimate, order estimation ), is an estimation problem designed to teach dimensional analysis or approximation of extreme scientific calculations.
The distance of closest approach of two objects is the distance between their centers when they are externally tangent. The objects may be geometric shapes or physical particles with well-defined boundaries. The distance of closest approach is sometimes referred to as the contact distance. For the simplest objects, spheres, the distance of ...
There are two main descriptions of motion: dynamics and kinematics.Dynamics is general, since the momenta, forces and energy of the particles are taken into account. In this instance, sometimes the term dynamics refers to the differential equations that the system satisfies (e.g., Newton's second law or Euler–Lagrange equations), and sometimes to the solutions to those equations.
In physics and engineering, a free body diagram ( FBD; also called a force diagram) [1] is a graphical illustration used to visualize the applied forces, moments, and resulting reactions on a body in a given condition. It depicts a body or connected bodies with all the applied forces and moments, and reactions, which act on the body (ies).
Work function. In solid-state physics, the work function (sometimes spelled workfunction) is the minimum thermodynamic work (i.e., energy) needed to remove an electron from a solid to a point in the vacuum immediately outside the solid surface. Here "immediately" means that the final electron position is far from the surface on the atomic scale ...