Physics 3151A/B Lecture 7: Central_force
Document Summary
Central force motion (most of the material presented in this chapter is taken from thornton and marion, chap. In this chapter we will study the problem of two bodies moving under the influence of a mutual central force. 6. 1 reduction to the equivalent one-body problem the reduced. We consider a system consisting of two point masses, m. 2 , when the only forces are those due to an interaction potential u . We will assume that u is a function of the distance between the two particles r = r = r. Such a system has six degrees of and m r. We could choose, for example, the three components of each of the two vectors, Let"s first define the center of mass r of the system as (6. 1) r. We also consider the distance between each particle and the center of mass r. 2 r, r (6. 2) with r = r.