Laws of motion; conservation of energy and momentum, applications to rotating frames, centripetal and Coriolis accelerations;
Motion under a central force; Conservation of angular momentum, Kepler's laws; Fields and potentials; Gravitational field and potential due to spherical bodies, Gauss and Poisson equations, gravitational self-energy; Two-body problem; Reduced mass; Rutherford scattering;
Centre of mass, a laboratory reference frame.
(b) Mechanics of Rigid Bodies
System of particles; Centre of mass, angular momentum, equations of motion;
Conservation theorems for energy, momentum, and angular momentum; Elastic and inelastic collisions;
Rigid body; Degrees of freedom, Euler's theorem, angular velocity, angular momentum, moments of inertia, theorems of parallel and perpendicular axes, equation of motion for rotation; Molecular rotations (as rigid bodies); Di and tri-atomic molecules; Precessional motion; top, gyroscope.
(c) Mechanics of Continuous Media
Elasticity, Hooke's law and elastic constants of isotropic solids and their inter-relation;
Streamline (Laminar) flow, viscosity, Poiseuille's equation, Bernoulli's equation, Stokes' law and applications.
(d) Special Relativity
Michelson-Morley experiment and its implications;
Lorentz transformations – length contraction, time dilation, the addition of relativistic velocities, aberration, and Doppler effect, mass-energy relation, simple applications to a decay process;
Four-dimensional momentum vector; Covariance of equations of physics.