Mechanics

During the early modern period, scientists such as Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Christiaan Huygens, and Isaac Newton laid the foundation for what is now known as classical mechanics.

There is another tradition that goes back to the ancient Greeks where mathematics is used more extensively to analyze bodies statically or dynamically, an approach that may have been stimulated by prior work of the Pythagorean Archytas.

[7] Examples of this tradition include pseudo-Euclid (On the Balance), Archimedes (On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies), Hero (Mechanica), and Pappus (Collection, Book VIII).

He said that an impetus is imparted to a projectile by the thrower, and viewed it as persistent, requiring external forces such as air resistance to dissipate it.

According to Shlomo Pines, al-Baghdaadi's theory of motion was "the oldest negation of Aristotle's fundamental dynamic law [namely, that a constant force produces a uniform motion], [and is thus an] anticipation in a vague fashion of the fundamental law of classical mechanics [namely, that a force applied continuously produces acceleration].

[9] There is some dispute over priority of various ideas: Newton's Principia is certainly the seminal work and has been tremendously influential, and many of the mathematics results therein could not have been stated earlier without the development of the calculus.

However, many of the ideas, particularly as pertain to inertia and falling bodies, had been developed by prior scholars such as Christiaan Huygens and the less-known medieval predecessors.

The development in the modern continuum mechanics, particularly in the areas of elasticity, plasticity, fluid dynamics, electrodynamics, and thermodynamics of deformable media, started in the second half of the 20th century.

Rigid bodies have size and shape, but retain a simplicity close to that of the particle, adding just a few so-called degrees of freedom, such as orientation in space.

Classical mechanics originated with Isaac Newton's laws of motion in Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, developed over the seventeenth century.

Quantum mechanics developed later, over the nineteenth century, precipitated by Planck's postulate and Albert Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect.

Modern descriptions of such behavior begin with a careful definition of such quantities as displacement (distance moved), time, velocity, acceleration, mass, and force.

The English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton improved this analysis by defining force and mass and relating these to acceleration.