The world and the Universe that contains it is in a constant state of motion. Fom the expansion of the Universe, through the Earth's spin and orbital motion around Sun, to the tides and the effort of pedalling uphill to the Hall of Residence in a typical St Andrews headwind, we are constantly subjected to forces of which we are often unaware.
Mechanics is the branch of physics that enables to make some sense of what's going on.
In this course of 15 lectures we'll start out by studying kinematics, the classification and comparison of motions. We'll go on to study dynamics, introducing the concepts of force, mass and friction with the help of Newton's three laws of motion. Towards the end of the course we'll find out how to characterize the properties of rigid bodies of arbitrary shape and size, and we'll discuss some of the basic ideas of fluid mechanics that tell us why oil tankers float and aircraft fly.