Introduction
Last Time: Newton’s 3 Laws & Gravitational Forces
- Newton’s 3 laws tell us how to predict the motion of any body if we know the forces that act on it
- The examples we used were the simplest cases: Constant acceleration (which means constant force) Uniform circular motion Examples of the effects of gravitational forces
- Very complicated to apply in most cases!
Today: Conservation Laws
- The most useful conclusions without solving equations!
- Conservation of momentum: Follows from Newton’s third law. (Chapt. 2 in March)
- Conservation of energy: The most important and useful law. (Chapt. 5 in March)
- MORE important than Newton’s Equations! - still valid in modern physics even though Newton’s laws are not !