As the Ebola virus outbreak continues to run amok in West Africa, scientists are looking ahead to the possibly pivotal use of experimental drugs and vaccines against the disease. It will take months to test, produce and deploy the therapies. But researchers hold out hope that these products — even incompletely vetted — might help to turn the tide against an illness that has defied public health efforts to bring it under control.

Saturday, 10 September 2011

Derivation of Newton's equations of motion

  If u is the initial velocity of a moving body, and if the velocity of the body changes to v (which we shall call the final velocity) in a time interval t, then the acceleration of the body in the time t is given by
a=(v-u)/t           -       (0)
Note that in the above formula we assume that the acceleration of the body was uniform (i.e. the same) throughout the time interval t. Below is a car moving with a uniform acceleration.
Now, equation (0) can be re-written as 
at = v-u         
=> v-u = at              
=> v= u + at        (1)


average velocity = (u+v)/2
Now, the distance s, traveled in the time t by the body is given by
distance traveled = average velocity x time
s = [(u+v)/2]t
From equation (1) we have v=u+at, substituting this in the above equation for v, we get
s = [(u+u+at)/2]t
=> s = [(2u+at)/2]t
=> s = [(u + (1/2)at)]t
              => s =  ut + (1/2)at2         -  (2)
This is Newton's second equation of Motion. This equation can be used to calculate the distance traveled by a body moving with a uniform acceleration in a time t.  Again here, if the body started from rest, then we shall substitute u=0 in this equation.
If you take a close look at the 2 equations of motion we derived just now you can observe that none of these equations carry a relation between distance traveled and final velocity of the body. All other relations are available. So, there is a need to find an equation which relates s and v. We derive it as follows.
We start with squaring equation (1). Thus we have
v2 = (u+at)2                 
=>    v2 = u2 + a2t2 + 2uat           
=>    v2 = u2 + 2uat + a2t            
=>    v2 = u2 + 2a(ut + (1/2)at2)
now, using equation 2 we have
=>   v2 = u2 + 2as                     - (3)  
As you can see, the above equation gives a relation between the final velocity v of the body and the distance s traveled by the body.
Thus, we have the the three Newton's equations of Motion as
1) v= u + at
            2) s = ut + (1/2)at2
       3) v2 = u2 + 2as

No comments:

Post a Comment

Your Comment is posted.