Exploring Motion in Physics: Beyond Translation, Rotation, and Oscillation

[Josh0768]

In high school I learned about three kinds of motion in classical mechanics - translation, rotation, and oscillation. Are there any other kinds of motion in the physical world?

 

[jedishrfu]

They mention circular in this reference although that could fall under translatory.

https://physicsabout.com/motion/

 

[anorlunda]

Brownian

Edit: Also diffusion.

 

[FactChecker]

I would add exponential motion. I think that linear combinations of those basic types would cover a lot.

 

[FactChecker]

Brownian

Edit: Also diffusion.

I think that the inclusion of oscillation in the OP really opened the door to a lot of patterns of motion. I don't know how much the OP would really want to include, but I think that Brownian motion is certainly a fundamental pattern. There are a lot of patterns of motion that can be modeled as a time series with different random distributions.

 

[anorlunda]

@Josh0768, I have a question for you. Motion is motion. Who cares whether people choose to describe it as 3 kinds of motion or 30 kinds? That doesn't change the physics.

 

[FactChecker]

@Josh0768, I have a question for you. Motion is motion. Who cares whether people choose to describe it as 3 kinds of motion or 30 kinds? That doesn't change the physics.

Perhaps he is looking for the types of motion that can be sustained with no forces applied and with energy conserved.

 

[DaveE]

I think the important point isn't making a list the ways things move (with/without forces applied) as much as looking ontologically at how we can analyze objects that move. As others have said, ultimately everything (except QM) was pretty much described by Newton's laws of simple motion, F=mA, etc. But there are analytical approaches that are powerful tools to simplify things, like angular momentum and such. I think this list should be thought of as a curriculum of analytical methods.

 

[Vanadium 50]

That doesn't change the physics.

But it does change the stamp collecting.

 

[hmmm27]

translation, rotation... transformation ? existence ?

 

[mpresic3]

I notice that high school physics and undergraduate physics textbooks suggest "there are ...", when they really mean, " we will treat only 3 kinds of motion". Later, more advanced textbooks in mechanics show how a composite body rotating is a combination of all its constituents translating. For example, a spinning baseball can be treated as the translation of the center of mass of the baseball, along with the rotation of all the constituent parts of the baseball rotating around the center of mass, or it could also be treated as all constituent parts (only) translating, under the influences of external forces (usually gravity, and drag) and internal (constraining) forces that force the constituent parts to remain at a fixed distance from one another. This is known as rigid body motion.

Or, when you have two oscillating motions along orthogonal axes with a relative phase of pi/2 radians, then you have circular motion.

In the end, it is not the "number of kinds" that are important. There is a certain amount of "poetic license" in these and probably all textbooks. The authors, rightly do not want to expose the students to too many concepts too fast.

 

[sophiecentaur]

@Josh0768, I have a question for you. Motion is motion. Who cares whether people choose to describe it as 3 kinds of motion or 30 kinds? That doesn't change the physics.

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