Formula One Racing: Classical Mechanics Inroduction
Formula One Racing: Classical Mechanics Inroduction
Formula One Racing: Classical Mechanics Inroduction
INRODUCTION
Formula One Racing
For as long as cars have been around, people have been racing them. We
begin our classical mechanics training to the thunderous sound of
engines.
In this quiz, you will have a front seat at one of the world's premier auto
races: the Monaco Grand Prix, a renowned race on the hilly streets of
Monte Carlo.
In classical mechanics, you'll add these rules to your toolbox and apply
them to a vast array of machines and systems. For example, by the end
of this quiz, you'll be able to explain why Formula One cars can take
sharp turns much faster than ordinary automobiles without skidding off
the road.
You are on the pit crew of an esteemed race team, and you are making a
final check of the vehicle as it starts the warm-up lap before the race
starts.
Few components of a racecar are more important than the tires. The
driver steers the car onto the circuit as you carefully watch the tires
rotate in case any adjustments are needed.
When the car is moving forward, in which direction do the wheels turn?
Explanation
Correct answer: B
The wheels generally roll along the ground, unless the tire is slipping on
the road.
Imagine you are the driver sitting in the car, and the car is moving
forward. If you looked down at the ground, from your point of view, it
appears to be moving backward. Thus, as long as the tires are rolling on
the ground, the point on one of your tires that makes contact with the
road is moving in the same direction—backward with the road.
As long as the contact — or "grip" — between the tires and the road
surface is strong, the force of friction acting on the tire propels the car
forward.
The friction between the tire and the road is actually the force that
propels the car forward. Cars are traditionally powered by an internal
Your team's driver takes the turn at a constant speed. Which direction
does the force of friction act on the tires to keep the car on its trajectory
around the curve?
Explanation
Correct answer: B
To travel around a curve requires an inward force toward the center of
the circular arc.
Friction on the tires not only keeps the car moving around the curve but
also provides the center-directed force. A vehicle skids off a curve
(possibly causing a wreck) when the tires lose grip on the road. Later in
this course, we’ll learn about centripetal forces that keep an object on a
circular trajectory.
One such force is air drag, a resistive force acting against the car's
forward motion. Air drag is the force of air hitting the vehicle, pushing
against its forward motion.
Assume acceleration is constant.
Sometimes the laws of physics are portrayed as a set of limitations that
the inventions of our imaginations must abide by—as if obeying these
laws is somehow the cost of existing in the physical universe.
In this quiz, we've entirely ignored the forces internal to the vehicle (for
example, the torque on the driveshaft, axles and various gears). We've
looked instead at some of the external forces: friction, air drag, and
"grip" which later in this course we will call normal force or normal
reaction. We'll go much deeper in later chapters, but in the next quiz,
we'll look at some broad features of all physical theories.
Cellular Automaton
"Others... make guesses that are very complicated, and it sort of looks
as if it is all right, but I know it is not true because the truth always
turns out to be simpler than you thought."
We call each square, plus its two neighbors, a trio. If we want to define
a "physics" for a cellular automaton, we need an update rule for each
possible trio. For example, if a square's trio were {■,■,■} it would
update to ■ according to the update rules in the diagram.
Explanation
Correct answer: 8 possibilities
Remember, a trio consists of a square and its two next door neighbors.
Each of the three can be either green or black, making for 2 possibilities
per square.
The total number of possible trios is simply the product of the number of
possibilities for each square:
.Ntrios = 2 × 2 × 2 = 8.
Once the update rule is complete with an entry for all possible trios, the
dynamics of a cellular automaton are nearly unambiguous.
The last thing required is the starting color of each square. In physics,
this is known as the initial state of a system. With an update rule and an
initial state in hand, we have everything we need to predict any future
state—the color of each square in our cellular automata.
What color will the green square be at the next time step using the
update rule below?
Explanation
Correct answer: ■
The update rule contains the information that determines the color of the
green square at the next time step. All we need to do is form a trio from
the green square and its two neighbors:
Can you figure out which of the movies below shows a cellular
automaton that's following this update rule that we used in the previous
question?
Note: the initial state of the three cellular automata below is all squares
black, except for the middle square which is green.
Explanation
Correct answer: Movie C
We can do this one of several ways.
There's always the brute force option of faithfully applying the rules to
each square in each frame and recording what we see. But this doesn't
give us any insight into what's happening.
Instead, let's try to inspect the properties of the update rule and reason
our way to the answer.
Can a second green square appear?
So, the black square to the left of the green square would turn green and
is the only way for a black square to turn green but what happens to the
original green square? Its trio is {■,■,■}, and looking at the update rule,
this square will become black in the next time step.
From here we can just follow the path of the green square through the
two remaining moves. If the green square is to the right of a black
square, then it moves to the left and the square it was on previously,
turns black.
The magic of cellular automata is that the update rule reflects all the
information we know about the system, as well as any assumptions
we've made about it. What's more is that the update rule encodes all the
possible motions in the system.
But are there such update rules in "real" physics? Consider Newton's law
of motion. It tells us that force is equal to mass times acceleration, F = m
a.F=ma. Is this an update rule that connects two states of a system?
Remember that acceleration is simply the change in velocity divided by
the change in time: a = \Delta v / \Delta t.a=Δv/Δt. Taking this into
account, Newton's law becomes\boxed{v_\text{final} = v_\text{initial}
+ \dfrac{F\Delta t}{m}},vfinal=vinitial+mFΔt,a simple update rule!
Reduced to its essence, classical mechanics is a two-fold endeavor:
understanding the lessons this update rule contains about the natural
world, and learning to solve it for the forces we find in nature.
There is one caveat that we glossed over. In nature it seems that time and
space aren't discrete like they are in cellular automata, they're
continuous. This means we have to make the timestep \Delta
tΔt infinitesimally small, which changes the discrete update rule into
a differential equation:m\frac{dv}{dt} = F.mdtdv=F.
HUYGENS' CLOCK PUZZLE
For hundreds of years, Huygens’s pendulum clock was the world’s most
precise timekeeper. But why was his invention so effective at keeping
time?
When you set a pendulum into motion, the time it takes to move back
and forth is called its period of oscillation. Use the visualization below
to release the pendulum from different heights.
Explanation
Correct answer: It hardly changes at all
In fact, the period of the pendulum barely changes at all in its first three
decimal places over the range of allowed release angles. A harmonic
oscillator's period is nearly independent of the height you release it from.
In the Springs chapter, we will see that this is only true for small angles
—less than 10o
This property is ideal for timekeeping because you don't need to release
the pendulum from a very specific position to have it keep the correct
time.
Similar to the cellular automata you encountered earlier, an update rule
generates the speed and position of the pendulum at any moment. This
update rule is expressed as a differential equation called the equation of
motion.
Which choice is likely the strongest interaction between the two clocks
shown?
Explanation
Correct answer: Vibrations along the beam when the escapement
ticks
Suppose we take two identical pendulum clocks and firmly attach them
to a heavy beam. Like all solid objects, the beam is a conduit for
vibrations. When one pendulum is kicked by the escapement, the
vibration passes the other clock.
In this quiz, we'll imagine ourselves a delivery person for Tony's pizza,
trying to make it around the city on a series of motorcycles. In analyzing
our motion from stop to stop, we'll apply common sense to calculate the
details of our motion, and try to generalize in anticipation of a formal
derivation of the kinematic relations in the next quiz.
Explanation
Correct answer: B
The v vs t plot tracks our velocity over the course of our trajectory. No
motion would correspond to a flat line at v = 0 for all times t.
What is the relationship between your velocity, the time, and the
distance you travel d?
Explanation
Correct answer: d=vT
This problem is essentially probing the definition of velocity. If we
travel with velocity v, it means that we travel v units of length in a unit
of time. If we travel for Δt units of time with velocity v, then our
distance travelled Δd will be vΔt.
Suppose you're on the way to Tony's pizzeria to start your day. You have
thirty minutes to get there, so you set your motorcycle to v1 = 10 km/h to
get there exactly on time (you assume you'll have no delays).
Fifteen minutes into your trip, you realize you're passing your cousin's
house, and you stop for five minutes to hang out.