Excerpt from Elementary Dynamics: A d104-Book for Engineers Those who have had experience in teaching elementary dynamics to students of Engineering will agree that the majority find considerable difficulty in grasping the fundamental principles on which the subject is based. There are new physical quantities to be understood, and new principles to be accepted which can only be expressed in terms of these quantities. Unfortunately, in many cases, this subject has to be introduced at a stage of development in mathematics at which the student expects some proof of what he is told to believe. He is not so prepared to accept things without proof as he was when first told that 2 x 3 = 6. Even at that early stage, probably an attempt was made to prove to him that 2 x 3 = 6, yet, in the end, he merely accepted the fact and memorised it. The author believes that the difficulty experienced is partly, though by no means entirely, due to the way the subject is often presented. In the student's mind it is associated with branches of pure mathematics such as trigonometry, analytical geometry, or infinitesimal calculus, and he is inclined to think that salvation lies in memorising a number of formulae which are to be used in solving problems, instead of looking upon dynamics as a fundamental branch of physical science, in which mathematics is of secondary importance and the physical ideas of primary importance. Quite commonly in elementary text-books, the second law of motion is at first summed up in the form, force = mass x acceleration, and the student is then given a number of examples to work out, most of which consist in substituting numbers in a formula. This very successfully disguises the true meaning of momentum, and the extraordinary generality of the second law of motion. The same applies to problems dealing with motion. The student is generally presented with certain formulae for motion involving a constant acceleration. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.