Chapter 1: General Principles

Eng. Miral Al-Shraideh

Department of Renewable Energy
Al al-Bayt University
 WHAT IS MECHANICS?

Is a branch of physical sciences that is concerned with the effects of

forces on the objects.

In other words

Study of what happens to a “thing” (the technical name is “BODY”)

when FORCES are applied to it.
BRANCHES OF MECHANICS
 Fundamental Concepts
The following four quantities are used throughout mechanics.
• Length
• Mass
• Time
• Force
Newton’s 2nd Law relates them: F = m * a
 Units of Measurements
We will work with two unit systems in statics:
• International System (SI)
• U.S. Customary (USCS)

Table 1-1 in the textbook summarizes these unit systems.

 COMMON CONVERSION FACTORS
 Table 1–2 provides a set of direct conversion factors between FPS and
SI units for the basic quantities.

Can you convert a force value of 47 lb into SI units?

Answer is 209.06 N
 THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF UNITS

No plurals (e.g., m = 5 kg, not kgs )

 Separate units with a • (e.g., meter second = m • s )

 Most symbols are in lowercase.

 Some exceptions are N, Pa, M and G.

Exponential powers apply to units, e.g., cm • cm = cm²

Prefixes. When a numerical quantity is either very large or very small,
the units used to define its size may be modified by using a prefix.
Some of the prefixes used in the SI system are shown in Table 1–3