MEC 568: ADVANCED DYNAMICS

Name:- Debanjan Lahiri

SBU ID:- 111027824

HW1: Paper review of A Rudimentary

History of Dynamics- Andrew Ross
Development of Dynamics
Origin: Ancient Greek
Progresses to Newtons Principia and now called Classical Mechanics
Learning about history of Dynamics is important.
The discussion of dynamics begins with citing the works of Newton.
Greeks played a key role in the growth of dynamics and the dominant figure being Aristole.

Aristoles theory:-
Heavier object falls quicker than lighter.
Speed of progression depends on medium.
Presence of void is impossible because the objects speed will be infinite.
If void exists then heavier object will fall at same rate as of lighter object.

Philoponus criticized Aristoles theory and created his own theories.

Some like medium does not play a role in maintaining motion but it acts as a
retarding force.
Middle ages
Aristoles views were analyzed in mid 13th century. Those studying Mechanics were reticent to go
beyond Aristoles theory.

Philosophers questioned about the theory of rest of world.

Later Aristoles theories were no longer protected by church.

Oxford calculators explained motion of object under uniform acceleration and approached
questions numerically.
Motions were classified according to their causes as Kinematics and Kinetics.
Mertonians analyzed uniform and accelerated motions.
Middle ages (continued)
French priest Jean Buridan introduced the concept of Inertia.
He gave a statement which was rudimentary and similar to Newtons centuries earlier.
Buridans student, Nicolo Oresme, used geometry to describe motion.
His work led to the advancement in dynamics.
Another student of Buridan, Albert, made a theory on projectile motion.

Galileo
He was the first modern dynamists.
Galileo took the concept of buoyancy by Archimedes from static to dynamic
concept.
Galileo stated object of equal density falls at same rate but denser object falls
faster than the less dense objects.
Huygens explained oscillations of a finite pendulum.
He observed that after two bodies collide their speed after collision maybe
different but the
Newton
His publication Principia was monumental.
According to him the theory behind a phenomenon us applicable to every where. He
made the 3 laws of motion: 1st law of motion, second law of motion and 3rd law of
motion.
He introduced centripetal force and gravitational force.
Angular momentum though was not discussed in Principia.
Newton gave a beginning to classical mechanics.

Newtons Successors
Bernoullis gave an earliest proper definition of inertial force.
The Newtonian equations cannot contemplate deformable bodies.
Bernoulli analysed the motion by balancing the moments.
Bernoulli recognised the solutions of catenary curve. Using this he analysed bending
of finite bodies.
He was first to state how the motion of a constrained system can be analysed.
Euler derived the tensor of inertia by taking the moments
about the centre of gravity.
1776 saw the birth of a foundation of classical mechanics.
It was in this year that Euler published his First and Second Axioms.
The laws of vectorial mechanics were understood and formulated then just
as they are today.

The Indirect Approach

Newton's approach is often called the direct approach, or vectorial dynamics.
In contrast to the direct approach there was indirect approach, or analytical
dynamics.
Leibniz used energy and work as the bases for mechanical principles.
He stated living force is twice the kinetic energy.
This contradicted Cartesian and Newtonian notion of conservation of momentum.

The article progress from Aristotle, through Philoponus, on to Galileo, and

Newton, and finishing in the details of how the great minds of the 18th century.