Classical Mechanics

Classical mechanics is the study of the motion of bodies (including the special case in which bodies remain at rest) in accordance with the general principles first enunciated by Sir Isaac Newton in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), commonly known as the Principia. 

In our investigation of classical mechanics we shall study many different types of motion, including:

1. Translational motion--motion by which a body shifts from one point in space to another (e.g., the motion of a bullet fired from a gun).

2. Rotational motion--motion by which an extended body changes orientation, with respect to other bodies in space, without changing position (e.g., the motion of a spinning top).

3. Oscillatory motion--motion which continually repeats in time with a fixed period (e.g., the motion of a pendulum in a grandfather clock).

4. Circular motion--motion by which a body executes a circular orbit about another fixed body [e.g., the (approximate) motion of the Earth about the Sun].