To help us properly analyze the motion of a system, we need to consider all the interactions that the system has with its surroundings. The number of interactions can become daunting, not to mention keeping track of the magnitudes and directions of all the forces that we use to describe these interactions. A free body diagram (FBD) is an invaluable tool to help us visualize all the forces acting on our system so that we may analyze the motion of the system much more efficiently. The FBD is the main physical representation of a force analysis.
Big Ideas
Big Idea 1: Objects and systems have properties such as mass and charge. Systems may have internal structure.
Big Idea 3: The interactions of an object with other objects can be described by forces.
Big Idea 4: Interactions between systems can result in changes in those systems.
Learning Objectives
BoxSand Learning Objectives
- Understand how to define a system for which to draw a FBD for.
- Demonstrate the ability to draw a properly scaled free body diagram from an image of a scenario or a written description of a scenario.
- Understand the importance of including a coordinate system along with a FBD.
- Demonstrate the ability to translate a FBD into Newton's second law equations.
- Strengthen the ability to decompose vectors into components along the chosen coordinate system.
- Connect the motion of an object (kinematics) with the forces acting on the object.
- Demonstrate the ability to quantitatively solve algebraic expressions, including quadratic equations.
- Be able to determine the relative direction of the acceleration of an object based off of a properly scaled FBD.
- Understand that the two forces constituting a force pair will never show up on the same FBD.
- Be able to identify any internal forces for a system if applicable.
- Further the development of problem solving strategies, which includes but is not limited to translating problems into different representations, determining knowns/unknowns, and identifying the relevant physics.
College Board Learning Objectives
Enduring Understanding and Essential Knowledge
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Enduring Understanding |
Essential Knowledge |
Assumptions
Describe what the assumptions are and why they're important
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History
Physics Fun
Fun stuff
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