PHYS201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Cartesian Coordinate System, Spacetime
17 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
The study of how objects move, how they respond to external forces, and how other factors, such as size, mass and mass distribution, affect their motion. This time we treat all physical objects as point like particles. Coordinate system: defines an origin, a positive direction (orientation) and a unit of length, uses one or more numbers to uniquely determine the position of a point. Earth is three dimensional (length, width, and height) Space-time is four dimensional: a cartesian coordinate system. Specifies a location on a point relative to a fixed reference point. The change in position = final product initial position. Is described as the distance covered per amount of travel/time. When we know both speed and direction of an object we know its velocity (m/s) The average speed is defined as the distance traveled divided by the time the trip took: average speed = distance/elapsed time.
