Question
Question: What is mechanics?...
What is mechanics?
Solution
Mechanics is one of the many branches of physics. Mechanics originated in Ancient Greece with the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers and physicists Aristotle and Archimedes and was further brought forward by physicists like Kepler and Galileo.
Complete step by step answer:
Mechanics is one of the most important branches of physics that deals with the motion of bodies that are moving with a lot less velocity than the velocity of light, the mathematics of the forces acting upon them and the displacements produced due to these forces.
Mechanics originated in the medieval age with the writings of the ancient Greek physicists Aristotle and Archimedes and further developed by Kepler and Galileo. However, the most important contribution made to Mechanics was by Sir Isaac Newton.
The mechanics of macroscopic bodies is governed by classical mechanics which were primarily developed by Sir Isaac Newton and hence, is termed as classical mechanics.
However, classical mechanics does not remain valid for microscopic sized bodies. For microscopic bodies, such as quantum particles like electrons and protons, the motion of the bodies can be properly explained and predicted by quantum mechanics (which is another branch of mechanics).
Note: Classical mechanics does not remain valid for microscopic objects. Therefore, quantum mechanics is the most general branch of mechanics that can explain the motion for all bodies – microscopic or macroscopic. In fact, if quantum mechanics is used for macroscopic bodies, it becomes the same as classical mechanics. However, quantum mechanics is much more complex in nature than complex mechanics as in quantum mechanics, all bodies are considered to have both wave-like and particle properties.