"Classical mechanics is a physical theory describing the motion of macroscopic objects, from projectiles to parts of machinery and astronomical objects, such as spacecraft, planets, stars, and galaxies."
The study of motion and its causes in the absence of external forces.
Kinematics: The study of motion without consideration of its causes, using concepts such as position, velocity, and acceleration.
Dynamics: The study of motion and its causes, including Newton's laws of motion and the concepts of force, mass, and acceleration.
Work and energy: The study of the relationship between the work done on an object and the resulting change in energy.
Conservation laws: The principles of energy and momentum conservation.
Newton's laws of motion: The three fundamental laws governing the behavior of objects in motion.
Circular motion: The study of motion in a circular path, including concepts such as centripetal force and angular momentum.
Gravitation: The study of the behavior of objects under the influence of gravitational forces, including Kepler's laws of motion and Newton's law of gravitation.
Oscillations: The study of periodic motion, including simple harmonic motion and resonance.
Waves: The study of the propagation of wave motion through various media, including sound waves and electromagnetic waves.
Special relativity: The principles of relativity, including the concepts of time dilation and length contraction.
General relativity: The study of the properties of space and time in the presence of gravity, including the concept of spacetime curvature and black holes.
Lagrangian mechanics: An alternative approach to Newtonian mechanics based on the concept of the action principle.
Hamiltonian mechanics: Another alternative approach to classical mechanics that employs the concept of Hamilton's equations.
Classical electromagnetism: The study of the behavior of charged particles in electromagnetic fields, including Maxwell's equations and the Lorentz force law.
Quantum mechanics: The study of the behavior of particles on a microscopic scale, including the principles of wave-particle duality and the uncertainty principle.
Newtonian mechanics: It describes the motion of particles under the influence of forces and the conservation of energy and momentum.
Lagrangian mechanics: It provides an alternative formulation of mechanics based on the concept of a Lagrangian function.
Hamiltonian mechanics: It provides another approach to mechanics by introducing a Hamiltonian function that describes the energy of a system.
Analytical mechanics: It includes both Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of mechanics along with other theories, such as the Hamilton-Jacobi theory and the canonical transformation theory.
Statistical mechanics: It is a branch of mechanics that studies the behavior of large ensembles of particles.
Relativistic mechanics: It extends Newtonian mechanics to include the effects of special relativity, such as time dilation and length contraction.
Quantum mechanics: It describes the behavior of particles on a very small scale and is based on the wave-particle duality principle.
Nonlinear mechanics: It studies the behavior of systems that are not linearly proportional to their inputs, such as chaotic systems.
Celestial mechanics: It studies the motion of celestial bodies, including planets, moons, and asteroids.
Fluid mechanics: It describes the behavior of fluids, including hydrodynamics and aerodynamics.
"For objects governed by classical mechanics, if the present state is known, it is possible to predict how it will move in the future (determinism)."
"For objects governed by classical mechanics, if the present state is known, it is possible to [...] how it has moved in the past (reversibility)."
"The 'classical' in 'classical mechanics' does not refer classical antiquity, as it might in, say, classical architecture. On the contrary, the development of classical mechanics involved substantial change in the methods and philosophy of physics."
"The qualifier distinguishes classical mechanics from physics developed after the revolutions of the early 20th century, which revealed limitations of classical mechanics."
"It consists of the physical concepts based on foundational works of Sir Isaac Newton, and the mathematical methods invented by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Leonhard Euler, and other contemporaries in the 17th century to describe the motion of bodies under the influence of forces."
"Later, more abstract methods were developed, leading to the reformulations of classical mechanics known as Lagrangian mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics."
"These advances, made predominantly in the 18th and 19th centuries, extend substantially beyond earlier works, particularly through their use of analytical mechanics."
"They are, with some modification, also used in all areas of modern physics."
"Classical mechanics provides accurate results when studying large objects that are not extremely massive and speeds not approaching the speed of light."
"When the objects being examined have about the size of an atom diameter, it becomes necessary to introduce the other major sub-field of mechanics: quantum mechanics."
"To describe velocities that are not small compared to the speed of light, special relativity is needed."
"In cases where objects become extremely massive, general relativity becomes applicable."
"A number of modern sources do include relativistic mechanics in classical physics, which in their view represents classical mechanics in its most developed and accurate form."
"[Classical mechanics describes] the motion of macroscopic objects, from projectiles to parts of machinery and astronomical objects, such as spacecraft, planets, stars, and galaxies."
"For objects governed by classical mechanics, if the present state is known, it is possible to predict how it will move in the future (determinism)."
"It consists of the physical concepts based on foundational works of Sir Isaac Newton, and the mathematical methods invented by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Leonhard Euler, and other contemporaries in the 17th century to describe the motion of bodies under the influence of forces."
"Later, more abstract methods were developed, leading to the reformulations of classical mechanics known as Lagrangian mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics."
"They are, with some modification, also used in all areas of modern physics."
"Classical mechanics provides accurate results when studying large objects that are not extremely massive and speeds not approaching the speed of light."