Chapter 4

Bullying Biomechanics with the Laws of Physics

In This Chapter

arrow Identifying Newton’s three laws

arrow Working with conservative and nonconservative forces

arrow Plugging into the power

arrow Conserving all physics

arrow Bouncing bodies

Nothing in the universe can break the laws of physics. In this chapter I introduce the fundamental laws of physics and explain how they’re relevant to biological systems and biomechanics. Biomechanics is the study of forces acting on biological organisms. Biomechanics is relevant from the study of ions moving within an organism to the study of the motion of animals.

This chapter focuses on Newton’s three laws of motion as well as the work-energy concept. These laws describe how objects move, based on their interactions with their surroundings. This chapter also describes conservative forces such as gravity. A conservative force will work against you in one direction, but going back in the opposite direction, the force will work with you. I also discuss nonconservative ...

Get Biophysics For Dummies now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.