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LECTURE 4
     goals and outline

lecture title

    Falling Motion: Galileo's Kinematics

lecture goals

  • Understand Galileo's theory of falling motion mathematically.
  • Understand uniform acceleration in general.
  • Learn simple spacetime diagrams (graphs), useful later in relativity.
  • Learn to use the simplest cases of the equations of motion for stasis, uniform velocity, and uniform acceleration. These are also what we graph in this lecture.

outline of lecture

    1. Tables

    2. Spacetime Diagrams

    (3. Equations....deferred to Lec 5)

quote

Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes--I mean the universe--but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.

-- Galileo Galilei

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Please email any questions, comments, or suggestions to Professor Bernice Durand, bdurand@theory3.physics.wisc.edu.

Revised September 4, 1997.


Content © 1997, Bernice Durand
Images and layout © 1997, Shane Hamilton