PHYS 1A Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Polar Coordinate System, Dimensional Analysis, Caesium
Document Summary
Goal of physics: provide quanitaive understanding of certain basic phenomena that occur in our universe. 1. 1 standards of length, mass, and time: law of physics: mathemaical relaionships among physical quaniies, length (l) Meter: distance traveled by light in a vacuum during a ime interval of. 1/299,792,458 seconds: mass (m): measure of resistance of object to changes in its moion. Kilogram: mass of a speciic plainum-iridium alloy cylinder. Note, diferent from weight: ime (t) Second: 9,192,631,770 imes the period of oscillaion of radiaion from the cesium atom: derived quaniies: expressed as combinaion of fundamental quaniies (speed, area ) Density: rho = mass per unit volume. 1. 3 conversion of units: unites treated as algebraic quaniies that can cancel each other, quanity muliplied by a conversion factor to provide desired units. 1. 6 coordinate systems: to specify object"s posiion, a ixed reference point (o) called the origin, uses set of speciied axes or direcions with an appropriate scale, cartesian coordinate system: rectangular coordinate system.
