PM [02] Circular Motion Preamble

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CIRCULAR MOTIONThe Magic of


After Aristotle

Aristotle’s concepts may be wrong in the modern eyes. But it seems to us that there is a few strokes of truth in the fundamentals underlying the concepts.

Let us check it in more details.


Circular Motion

Circular motion, as its name suggests, is motion in a circle. An electrons flying around a nucleus, a merry go round, a compact disc, a Ferris wheel, the moon orbiting the earth, etc. are events belonging to such a kind of motion.


Curvilinear & Circular Motion

Circular motion is a special case of plane curvilinear motion. While curvilinear motion may involve a lot of variations in the curvatures of the motion path, circular motion is constrained by a constant radius. Thus the curvature in circular motion is much simpler, and as its name implies, the motion path is a simple circle.

Curvilinear Motion Circular Motion

Centre


Only Circular Motionis Considered

However, curvilinear motions are in general macro phenomena. In the micro particle world, natural motions are generally either rectilinear or more or less circular, so in the coming section, only circular and rotational motions are considered.

This is an appropriate move, because circular and rotational motions are the simpler versions of curvilinear motion. It is a more natural approach by having an understanding of the simpler items first and then proceed to grasp the more complicated ones later.


Importance of Circular Motion

Though much simpler than the free curve, circular motion plays an important role in classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, particle physics and astrophysics. We shall see that its popularity is in fact due to one of its natural characteristics as significant as those of rectilinear motion.


COPERNICUS’ & KEPLER’S ORBITALSTo be continued in:

PM [02] Circular Motion Preamble

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