The study of objects in motion without explicit consideration for the forces which produced the motion. Similar to the absolute value of a number but applies to vectors as well. The property of an object which determines its resistance to changes in velocity . The study of objects in motion. Mechanics is normally limited to a small number of large slow objects, as opposed to statistical mechanics which deals with large numbers of objects, relativistic mechanics which deals with objects moving near the speed of light and quantum mechanics which deals with objects more or less the size of atoms.
Mechanics encompasses the topics of kinematics and dynamics .
Another word for perpendicular. Normal in this sense is usually used in refering to a vector's orientation relative to some surface. For example a vertical vector is normal to a horizontal surface. There are physical objects like baseballs and uranium atoms, and mathematical objects like numbers and vectors . It will be clear from the context what sort of object we are talking about.