Undergraduate Catalogue of Courses 2012/2013
MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES
MX 3023
MECHANICS A
CREDIT POINTS 15
Course Co-ordinator: Dr C Lopez
Pre-requisite(s): MA 2507
- Air Resistance Revision of the basic ideas of Newtonian mechanics and application to particles moving under gravity.
- The effect of air resistance and the idea of terminal velocity.
- Oscillations The theory of oscillations of one-dimensional systems. Hooke's law for springs. Free vibrations, damped vibrations and forced vibrations. The concept of resonance.
- Momentum and Angular Momentum Definitions and basic concepts. Rate of change of angular momentum equals moment.
- Conservation laws. Motion under a central force. Newton's law of gravity.
- Energy and Potentials Force fields. Gradient of a scalar function. Consevative force fields and potentials.
- Consevation of energy.
- Applications.
- Inertial frames The basic ideas of inertial frames and a brief discussion of Galilean transformations.
- Systems of Particles Centre of mass, the motion of the centre of mass. Total angular momentum of a system
of particles. Closed systems. - Two body problem.
- Collisions Elementary theory. Conservation of momentum. Elastic collisions and conservation of energy.
- Simple applications.
5 one-hour lectures per fortnight and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.
1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (80%); in-course assessment (20%).
Resit: 1 two-hour examination (maximum of 100% resit and 80% resit with 20% in-course assessment).
Only marks gained on first sitting can be used for Honours classification.

