A General Discussion

on

Newtonian Physics

By Ramanand Jha
Email: ramanand_jha@yahoo.com
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 Apology

I profusely apologize to
my learned colleagues and friends
in advance
for my very elementary pedagogical seminar.

I do not claim to be an expert of classical physics.

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 Objective

To keep our curiosity alive

by initiating
academic discussion
among academic staffs and students
for better understanding of
physics.

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 Outline

1. Historical background (Aristotle, Galileo, Kepler)

2. Newton’s laws
3. Discussion of Newton’s laws.
4. Types of forces
5. Absolute Time and Space
6. Action-at-distance

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 .

It is a miracle
that
curiosity survives formal
education.
– Albert Einstein
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 Aristotle Laws of Terrestrial Motion
(384 BC)
Inanimate objects seek their natural state of rest.
(I) Laws of falling object:
1. The speed of fall of a body is proportional to the weight
i.e. V α mg
2. The speed of fall of a body is inversely to the density of
the medium it is falling through i.e. V α 1/ρ
II) Aristotle Laws of Terestrial Motion:
1. Nothing moves unless it is pushed.
2. A force maintains the velocity, F= m dr/dt

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 Aristotle Laws of Heavenly Motion

Heavenly objects are not made up of the four elements

(earth, water, air and fire) but of a fifth element called
either, whose natural state is circular motion.
Remarks
1) Unfortunately, it must be admitted that some of his physics
work - was not up to his usual high standards. He didn't check
out his laws of motion in any serious way because he
evidently found living creatures more interesting than the
falling stones.
2) At the same time he was the first person who shifted
concerned from WHY (Plato’s concerned) to HOW.

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 Galileo (1564 AD)
Birth of experimental physics

He is considered as "father of science" because of his

contributions:
 Rejection of blind allegiance (loyalty) to authority (of
Church, Aristotle, …) in science
 Separation of science from Philosophy and Religion
 Use of mathematics as a tool of science than logic.
 Pioneering the use of quantitative experiments and
mathematical analysis of the result

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 Kepler (1571-1630, German) Laws

1) (1605) The planet moves in elliptic orbit with the sun at

one of its focus. ( <= f α 1/r2)
2) (1602) Velocity of sweeping area from the main focus
remains constants during the motion. (<= conservation
of angular momentum)
3) (1618) T² α d³ (<= conservation of energy)

A student of Brahe. He spent 16 years to deduce

his model from the Brahe’s astronomical data.
He discovered that the orbit of Mars is accurately
described by an ellipse with the sun at one
focus; and extended this for all planets.
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 Great Achievement of Newton.

The Aristotle’s view:

The earth remains fixed while all other heavenly bodies
moves around it.
Kepler’s laws:
They were impressive but purely descriptive –they do not
explain the motion of the planets, but merely describes it.
These laws, not an apple, that lead Newton to his law of
gravitation.
The great achievement of Newton was to find the
underlying cause for motion of the planets.

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 Newton (1642-1727)
Provided the deterministic view

Newton’s (Principia, 1687)

a) Laws of Motion and
b) Theory of Gravitation
brought the terrestrial and the heavenly motion under the
one umbrela.
These laws also gives the deterministic view of the entire
universe.

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 Newton's 1st Law of Motion
(Law of Inertia)
Every material point persists in its state of motion (rest or
uniform motion in a straight line) until the action force
compels it to change that state.
Descartes (the same person related with cartesian
coordinate) perfected the law by adding the crucial rider
“in a straight line”.

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 Newton's 2nd Law of Motion
(Law of Dynamics)
The body under the influence of force
1) accelerates in the direction of force applied F || a (it
excludes the possibility of negative mass)
2) force is proportional to the rate of change of momentum.
F α dp/dt

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 Newton's 3rd Law of Motion
(Law of Action & Reaction)
a) Weak form
Every action has equal (in magnitude) and opposite (in
direction) simultaneous reaction.
Remark: Leads to conservation of linear momentum of an
isolated system.

b) Strong form
Every action has equal (in magnitude) and opposite (in
direction) simultaneous reaction acting along the same
line of action (i.e., the line joining the particles).
The word simultaneous is understood implicitly.
Remark: It leads to conservation of angular momentum of
an isolated system.
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 .
It seems, the 1st and 3rd laws can be
generated by the 2nd law.

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 Discussion on
Newton's Laws of Motion
Sir Arthur Eddington once made the un-flattering comment
(a comment that makes a thing seem less attractive
than they really are):

first law essentially says that “every particle continues in its

state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line except
insofar that it doesn’t.”

Although Newton’s laws might seem somewhat vacuous

(lack of intelligent ideas) at first glance, there is
actually a bit more content to them than Eddington’s
comment implies.
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 Discussion of 1st law.

0) NFL is the Galileo’s statement that completely replaces

the Aristotle 1st law of terestrial motion.
1) It defines zero force.
2) The NFL does not hold in arbitrary frame.
3) It asserts, existence of special type of frame called
inertial frame.
4) There are infinite number of Inertial frames.
5) The NFL restricts NSL i.e. force is related to acceleration
(Aristotle Laws states, F= m dr/dt, force is related to
velocity).

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Discussion of 2nd law

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Discussion of 2nd law …

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Discussion of 3rd law …

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Discussion of 3rd law …

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 Discussion of 3rd law …

a) Newton’s third law does not hold good in

electrodynamics and consequently the total
momentum of the two charged particles
interacting through their magnetic field is not
conserved.
b) The missing momentum is carried off in the
electromagnetic field. The total momentum of
the system is indeed conserved, but the fact of
the matter is that the system consists of the two
particles plus the electromagnetic field. Each
particle interacts with the electromagnetic field,
and not with the other particle.

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 Are following inertial frames ?

Is an aircraft moving in gravity free space along a

straight line can be considered inertial frame?
Yes
Is an aircraft moving in gravity free space along a
circular path -using jet mechanism- can be
considered inertial frame? No
A satellite moving around the earth under the
action of gravity can be considered inertial
frame? Yes

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 Are following inertial frames …

An electron (=satellite) moving around the nucleus

under the action of coulomb-force can be
considered inertial frame? No
An electron moving along a straight line under the
action of constant & uniform electric field can be
considered inertial frame? No
A particle moving along a straight line under the
action of constant & uniform gravity can be
considered inertial frame? Yes

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Are these Inertial Frames?

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Are these Inertial Frames …

Mathematical definition of Inertial frame,

aμ=0
, the four acceleration must vanish.

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 Coordinate System

Concept of an inertial frame needs i) a coordinate system

to specify spatial location and ii) a clock/clocks to specify
temporal order of events.

Spatial Coordinate System:

It is a system for assigning unique spatial coordinate to
each point of the system or part of it. In general, a
coordinate system may not consistently cover the entire
space.

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 Frame of Reference

Newtonian Frame of reference:

It refers to a spatial coordinate system and a global clock.
The time of an event is measure by the single global
clock.
Minkowskian Frame of reference:
It refers to a spatial coordinate system and local clocks at
each point of space. The time of an event is measure by
the local clock.

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 Inertial frame

It is a frame of reference with respect to that, a point mass

accelerates only on the application of dynamical force.
Or
It is a frame of reference with respect to that Newton's first
law holds true i.e. a free particle travels in a straight line
at constant speed.

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 Dynamic/Kinematic Force Field

Dynamic/Real force field:

It is the field of force that arises due to interaction, having
physical reality i.e. its existence is frame independent
and the force exerted by the field is independent of mass
(or acceleration is mass depended).
Kinematic/ Pseudo/Fictitious force field:
It is the field of force that arises without any interaction,
having no physical reality i.e. its existence is frame
dependent (only in non-inertial frame) and the force
exerted by the field is proportional to the mass (or
acceleration is mass independent).
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Dynamic/Kinematic Force Field …

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 Dynamic/Kinematic Force Field …

It is important to note, gravity is a

kinematic/pseudo force field that can be
always eliminated, locally.

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Consequence of Negative mass

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Consequence of Negative mass …

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 Absolute Time and Space

Absolute time: It is a concept of time that

hypothesizes, the rate of time of each observer
can be scaled by linear mapping to a common
time. T’= aT+b
Absolute space: It is a concept of space that
hypothesizes, the space is an inert arena on
which other physical phenomena take place i.e.
the space affects the other phenomena, but the
space itself is not affected by those phenomena.

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 Absolute Time and Space

Newtonian absolute space:

It hypothesizes the existence of a unique inertial system
out of an infinite number of inertial frame.
Remark
One can also visualized, location (=> space) is relative, it is
not an absolute concept.
Ex: Chalk-power …
=> In my opinion, one can not go back in time ..

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 Absolute Time and Space

What is space and time?

Many philosophers tried to define space and

time, and talked about their meaning and
existence but did not reach to any
meaningful and verifiable conclusion; in
my opinion these were just an act of
getting intellectual pleasure.

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 Absolute Time and Space

Einstein started his STR just from the

workable definition of space and time i.e.,
a) what we measure by the meter-scale is
the space and
b) what we measure by the clock is the
time.
The entire theory of special relativity is just
based on these workable definitions and
leads to remarkable, verifiable and
astonishing result.

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 Action-at-distance

Newton’s theory of gravitation set a trend

during 17th to 19th century to regard all
forces as action-at-distance.

Def: It is the action of a body directly on

another body which is not in contact with
the first body.
It can be
1) Advanced 2) Instantaneous 3) Retarded
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 Action-at-distance

The principle of relativity gives both the

possibility of reaching the signal at any
spatial point either by moving forward in
time or backward in time.
The principle of local causality (cause must
precede effect) excludes advanced
solution i.e., Past can effect future but the
future can never effect past.

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 Action-by-contact interaction

Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism reversed this trend,

by interpreted force by the means of field and action-by-
contact.
Action-by-contact interaction between two separated
particles is regarded as action-by-contact of one
particle on the field and followed by the second action-
by contact of the field on the second particle i.e.

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 Non-interaction theorem of
Van Dam and Wigner (1966)
It states, in order to preserve the law of
conservation of energy-momentum for
interacting particles the concept of field is
needed which serve as the store house of
energy-momentum.
In non-relativistic physics, the conservation of
momentum is a trivial consequence of Newton’s
laws of equality of action and reaction.
In relativistic physics, the conservation of
momentum is much harder to achieve.

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 Mathematical equivalence of
fields and action-at-distance

In 1972, Sudarshan shown, the fields and action-at-

distance are mathematically equivalents formulation of
an interaction.
Remarks:
Fields provide an elegant picture of conservation of energy
and momentum; and consequently electromagnetism
and gravitation are preferred to be described in terms
of local fields.
In instantaneous action-at-distance theories momentum
conservation is achieved by adding an extra interaction
momentum term for each particle, which is an integral
over the entire history which looks quite ugly

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 Mathematical equivalence of
fields and action-at-distance …
The contrast between field theory and the
instantaneous action-at-distance is brought out
sharply by the following example:
After the annihilation of particle-antiparticle pair
their energy-momentum must continue to exist.
 a) As per the field theory, the energy-
momentum exists in the electromagnetic
radiation (photon).
 b) As per action-at-distance theory, the energy-
momentum exists in the ghosts of particles
corresponding to the un-annihilated particles.
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 Demonstration

Is momentum conserved ?

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.

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