Definition of

Kinematics

In order to know the meaning of the term kinematics, it is necessary to discover, first of all, what its etymological origin is. In this case, we can determine that it derives from Greek, exactly from the sum of two clearly delimited components:

-The noun “kineema”, which can be translated as “movement” or “agitation”.

-The suffix “-tikos”, which is used to indicate “relative to”.

The idea of ​​kinematics refers to that which is linked to movement : the change in position of a body. Kinematics is also called the specialty of physics that is focused on the analysis of movement, without taking into account the characteristics of the forces that generate it.

KinematicsIt can be said that kinematics studies the movement of bodies , leaving aside the causes that cause it. That is why it is responsible for analyzing the trajectories that bodies travel over time.

Acceleration and magnitude are the most important quantities with which kinematics works. Acceleration is obtained by dividing a change in speed by the time spent, while speed is the result of the division between the space traveled and the time used.

In addition to everything stated above, we cannot ignore the existence of a series of interesting data about kinematics:

-Its three fundamental elements are the moving object, space and time. However, there are others that must also be known, such as position, trajectory, distance and displacement without forgetting the corresponding speed and what is called average acceleration, which is the change in speed with respect to time.

-Coordinate systems are basic tools for work within this discipline that concerns us.

-In kinematics the concept of average speed is widely used. This relates the total distance that the object has traveled with the time it took to travel it.

-When working on kinematics you must start from something as important as the type of movement performed by the object in question. Thus, we find the fact that it can be uniform rectilinear, uniformly accelerated rectilinear, circular, simple harmonic, uniform circular, parabolic, uniformly accelerated circular, complex harmonic, rigid solid...

At a mathematical level, kinematics indicates how the position coordinates of a body change as a function of time . This trajectory can be described by a mathematical function that depends on the acceleration (the change in speed over time) and the velocity (the time in which the body changes its position).

We can analyze from kinematics the case of a train that goes from point A to point B. If both points are separated by a distance of 400 kilometers and the train takes 2 hours to complete the journey, its average speed was 200 kilometers per hour . With a constant acceleration in the same direction as the velocity, a rectilinear motion is produced with uniform acceleration and a velocity that varies in time. On the other hand, when the speed is zero, the rectilinear movement is uniform and the speed is constant.