Book 1 in the Light and Matter series of free introductory physics textbooks
www.lightandmatter.com
The Light and Matter series of
introductory physics textbooks:
1 Newtonian Physics
2 Conservation Laws
3 Vibrations and Waves
4 Electricity and Magnetism
5 Optics
6 The Modern Revolution in Physics
Benjamin Crowell
www.lightandmatter.com
Fullerton, California
www.lightandmatter.com
copyright 1998-2008 Benjamin Crowell
rev. December 30, 2009
This book
is
licensed under
the Creative Com-
mons Attribution-ShareAlike
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3.0,
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, except
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www.lightandmatter.com.
ISBN 0-9704670-1-X
To Paul Herrschaft and Rich Muller.
Brief Contents
0 Introduction and Review 19
1 Scaling and Order-of-Magnitude Estimates
43
Motion in One Dimension
2 Velocity and Relative Motion
69
3 Acceleration and Free Fall
91
4 Force and Motion
123
5 Analysis of Forces
145
Motion in Three Dimensions
6 Newton’s Laws in Three Dimensions
177
7 Vectors
189
8 Vectors and Motion
201
9 Circular Motion
217
10 Gravity
233
Contents
Preface . .
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15
0 Introduction and Review
0.1 The Scientific Method . .
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19
0.2 What Is Physics? . .
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22
Isolated systems and reductionism, 24.
0.3 How To Learn Physics .
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0.4 Self-Evaluation . .
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27
0.5 Basics of the Metric System. .
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28
The metric system, 28.—The second, 29.—
The meter,
30.—The kilogram, 30.—
Combinations of metric units,
30.—
Checking units, 31.
0.6 The Newton, the Metric Unit of Force 32
0.7 Less Common Metric Prefixes. .
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0.8 Scientific Notation . .
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33
0.9 Conversions . .
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34
Should that exponent be positive, or
negative?, 35.
0.10 Significant Figures . .
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36
Summary . .
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