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Make: Physics
book

Make: Physics

by Joan Horvath, Rich Cameron
June 2026
Beginner to intermediate
334 pages
8h 54m
English
Make: Community
Content preview from Make: Physics

Chapter 2. Forces and Newton’s Laws

Kinematics is a very practical branch of physics and as such has been around in some form since antiquity. When a medieval army was using a catapult to fling rocks over a castle wall, groups that could reasonably accurately compute where their rocks would go had an obvious advantage. Looking at the problem of the motion of a projectile is a good starting point for us to understand how to think about how the physicist mindset can be applied.

In this chapter we do a simple video experiment to see how motion of a projectile works, and how we can use it to understand gravitational force. A modern cell phone camera makes this analysis a lot easier than it was for our medieval friend. We will take (and analyze) ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0636920346562Errata Page