Chapter 5: Kinematics of Point Masses
In this chapter we will show how to describe and analyse the dynamic motion of objects in space and time. We begin by defining what we mean by space, time, motion and kinematics in Sec. 5.1. Then we will describe what displacement, velocity and acceleration vectors are in Secs. 5.3-5.5. Subsequently we introduce the path coordinate, that allows simplifying motion in 3D to a 1D problem and show how to determine position, velocity and accelerations along the path curve in Secs. 5.7 and 5.8, and also show how to do this using various 3D coordinate systems (Sec. 5.9). Finally we discuss kinematic analysis of segmented motion in Sec. 5.10.