The Foundation Principles of Classical Mechanics

Dynamics is the theory of motion and the forces and torques that produce it. This theory integrates our earlier studies of kinematics, the geometry of motion, with certain fundamental laws of nature that relate force, torque, and motion. In this chapter the primitive concepts of mass and force introduced in Chapter 1 are related to motion through some basic principles commonly known as Newton’s laws. Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), often referred to as simply the Principia, published in 1687, formalized and extended earlier achievements of others by creating an axiomatic structure for the foundation principles of mechanics. By the organization of problems around his fundamental laws, Newton successfully demonstrated the application of his theory to the study of problems of mechanics of the solar system. He thus began the idea that the motions of bodies may be deduced from a few simple principles.