Introduction to Kinematics

In classical mechanics, we are ultimately interested with understanding the motion of objects. However, before we can even begin to discuss the causes of such motion (i.e. before we study the dynamics of physical systems), we must first find a way of describing the motion of objects. In other words, we want to develop a mathematical formalism that allows us to represent the position, velocity, and acceleration of moving objects, and to express how these quantities are related to each other in time. This is the project of kinematics.