FUNDAMENTALS OF MECHANICS

Mechanics may be defined as that science which describes and predicts the conditions of rest or motion of bodies under the action of forces. It is divided into three parts: mechanics of rigid bodies, mechanics of deformable bodies and mechanics of fluids.

The basic concepts used in mechanics are: space, time, mass, and force. These concepts cannot be truly defined; they should be accepted on the basis of our intuition and experience and used as a mental frame of reference for our study of mechanics.