Ratan Chandra Ghosh

Associate Professor
Department of Physics
University of Dhaka

Academic records:
Degree Institution Department Passing Result
/Certificate /Group year
Ph.D Hiroshima University, Japan Soft Matter Physics 2010 Pass

M.S. University of Dhaka, Dhaka Physics 2005 1st Class (2nd)

B.Sc. University of Dhaka, Dhaka Physics 2003 1st Class (5th)

H.S.C. Abujar Gifari College, Dhaka Science 1995 1st*

S.S.C. K. P. H. School. Kishoregonj Science 1993 1st*

Feel free to contact:

Mobile: 01747-047705
E-mail: ratan31@gmail.com

Course: General Science and Environment, Department of Finance, Course Number F110 Page 1
 Course Introduction
Course Title : General Science and Environment
Course Number : F110
Syllabus: : Syllabus of the course is given below
1. Mechanics:
Speed, Velocity, Acceleration, Newton’s law of motion, Work,
Energy and Power.
2. Properties of Matter:
Force of gravity, Weight and Friction.
3. Atomic and Molecular Physics:
Some molecular properties of matter, Atoms, the big idea.
4. General Chemistry:
Bonding, Reactions, equations and amounts, Energy changes and
Reversible reactions.
5. Environment:
Useful materials from Crude oil, Chemistry and the
Environment.

References:
1. Fundamentals of Physics
D. Halliday, R. Resnick, and J. Walker, 9th edition, John, wiley and Sons.
2. General Chemistry
D. Ebbing, 9th edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.
3. Environmental Chemistry
A. K. De, 5th edition, New Age International Publication, Delhi.

Course: General Science and Environment, Department of Finance, Course Number F110 Page 2
What is motion?
Matter and Motion
All matter in the universe is constantly in motion, for example,
Revolution of Earth around the Sun
Electron is moving around the nucleus of an atom.
Leaves rustle in the wind.
Lava flows from a volcano.
Bees move from flower to flower as they gather pollen.
Blood circulates through your body.

How can the motion of these different objects be described?

Changing Position
To describe an object in motion, you must first recognize that the object is in motion.
Something is in motion if it is changing position. It could be a fast-moving airplane, a leaf
swirling in the wind, or water trickling from a hose. Even your school, attached to
Earth, is moving through space. When an object moves from one location to another, it is
changing position. The runners shown in a sport sprint from the start line to the finish line.
Their positions change, so they are in motion.

Relative Motion
Determining whether something changes position requires a point of reference. An object
changes position if it moves relative to a reference point. To visualize this, picture yourself
competing in a 100-m dash. You begin just behind the start line. When you pass the finish
line, you are 100 m from the start line. If the start line is your reference point, then your
position has changed by 100 m relative to the start line, and motion has occurred.

Distance and Displacement

Suppose you are to meet your friends at the park in five minutes. Can you get there on time
by walking, or should you ride your bike? To help you decide, you need to know the distance
you will travel to get to the park. This distance is the length of the route you will travel from
your house to the park.

Suppose the distance you traveled from your house to the park was 200 m. When you get to
the park, how would you describe your location?
You could say that your location was 200 m from your house. However, your final position
depends on both the distance you travel and the direction. Did you go 200 m east or west? To
describe your final position exactly, you also would have to tell the direction from your
starting point. To do this, you would specify your displacement. Displacement includes the
distance between the starting and ending points and the direction in which you travel.

Speed
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To describe motion, you usually want to describe how fast something is moving. The faster
something is moving, the greater the distance it can travel in a unit of time, such as one
second or one hour. Speed is the distance an object travels in a unit of time. The unit for
speed is the unit of distance divided by the unit of time. In SI units, speed is measured in
units of m/s—meters per second. However, speed can be calculated using other units such as
kilometers for distance and hours for time.

speed=distance/time

Average Speed
avg.speed=total
A car traveling in city traffic distence
might have to speed /total
up and slow down many times. How could
time
you describe the speed of an object whose speed is changing?
One way is to determine the object’s average speed between where it starts and stops. The
speed equation written above can be used to calculate the average speed. Average speed is
found by dividing the total distance traveled by the total time taken.

Instantaneous Speed
An object in motion can change speeds many times as it speeds up or slows down. The speed
of an object at one instant of time is the object’s instantaneous speed. To understand the
difference between average and instantaneous speeds, think about walking to the library. If it
takes you 0.5 h to walk 2 km to the library, your average speed would be 4 km/h. However,
you might not have been moving at the same speed throughout the trip. At a crosswalk, your
instantaneous speed might have been 0 km/h. If you raced across the street, your speed might
have been 7 km/h. If you were able to walk at a steady rate of 4 km/h during the entire trip,
Course: General Science and Environment, Department of Finance, Course Number F110 Page 4
you would have moved at a constant speed. Average speed, instantaneous speed, and
constant speed are illustrated in Figure 1.

Velocity
The motion of an object also depends on the direction in which the object is moving. The
direction of an object’s motion can be described with its velocity. The velocity of an object is
the speed of the object and the direction of its motion. For example, if a car is moving west
with a speed of 80 km/h, the car’s velocity is 80 km/h west. The velocity of an object is
sometimes represented by an arrow. The arrow points in the direction in which the object is
moving. The velocity of an object can change if the object’s speed changes, its direction of
motion changes, or they both change. For example, suppose a car is traveling at a speed of 40
km/h north and then turns left at an intersection and continues on with a speed of 40 km/h.
The speed of the car is constant at 40 km/h, but the velocity changes from 40 km/h north to
40 km/h west.
Constant speed means steady speed, neither speeding up nor slowing down. Constant
velocity, on the other hand, means both constant speed and constant direction. Constant
direction is a straight line-the object's path doesn't curve. So, constant velocity means motion
in a straight line at a constant speed-motion with no acceleration.

Acceleration and Motion

When you watch the first few seconds of a liftoff, a rocket barely seems to move. With each
passing second, however, you can see it move faster until it reaches an enormous speed.
When an object changes its motion, it is accelerating. Acceleration is the change in velocity
divided by the time it takes for the change to occur. Like velocity, acceleration has a
direction. If an object speeds up, the acceleration is in the direction that the object is moving.
If an object slows down, the acceleration is opposite to the direction that the object is
moving. What if the direction of the acceleration is at an angle to the direction of motion?
Then the direction of motion will turn toward the direction of the acceleration.
Course: General Science and Environment, Department of Finance, Course Number F110 Page 5
Speeding Up
You get on a bicycle and begin to pedal. The bike moves slowly at first, but speeds up as you
keep pedaling. Recall that the velocity of an object is the speed of an object and its direction
of motion. Acceleration occurs whenever the velocity of an object changes. Because the
bike’s speed is increasing, the velocity of the bike is changing. As a result, the bike is
accelerating. For example, the toy car in Figure 2 is accelerating because it is speeding up.
The speed of the car is 10 cm/s after 1s, 20 cm/s after 2s, and 30 cm/s after 3s. Here the
direction of the car’s acceleration is in the same direction as the car’s velocity—to the right.

Slowing Down
Now suppose you are biking at a speed of 4 m/s and you apply the brakes. This causes you to
slow down. When you slow down, your velocity changes because your speed decreases. This
means that acceleration occurs when an object slows down, as well as when it speeds up. The
car in Figure 3 is slowing down. During each time interval, the car travels a smaller distance,
so its speed is decreasing.
Changing Direction
The velocity of an object also changes if the direction of motion changes. Then the object
doesn’t move in a straight line, but instead moves in a curved path. The object is accelerating
because its velocity is changing. In this case the direction of acceleration is at an angle to the
direction of motion. Figure 4 shows an example of an object that is accelerating. The ball
starts moving upward, but its direction of motion changes as its path turns downward. Here
the acceleration is downward. The longer the ball accelerates, the more its path turns toward
the direction of acceleration.

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 Figure 4

Calculating Acceleration
If an object is moving in only one direction, its acceleration can be calculated using this
equation. In this equation, time is the length of time over which the motion changes. In SI
units, acceleration has units of meters per second squared (m/s2).

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One Dimensional Motion with Constant Acceleration
1D motion with constant acceleration is shown in the following Figure 5

Figure 6: we match each vx -t graph on the left with the ax -t graph on the right that best
describes the motion

What is force?
When you shoot a basketball or kick a soccer ball, you are exerting a force on an object.
In fact, every push or pull you exert results in a force being applied to some object. A force
is a push or pull that one object exerts on another. Just like velocity and acceleration,
force also is a vector that has a size and a direction. The size of a force often is called the
strength of the force. The direction of a force is the direction in which the push or pull is
applied. For example, when you lift your backpack, you apply an upward force. In SI units,
force is measured in Newton (N).

Course: General Science and Environment, Department of Finance, Course Number F110 Page 8
Changing Motion
What happens to the motion of an object when you exert a force on it? A force can cause the
motion of an object to change. If you have played billiards, you know that you can cause a
ball at rest to roll into a pocket by striking it with another ball. The force applied by the
moving ball causes the ball at rest to move in the direction of the force.

Balanced Forces
Force does not always change velocity. In Figure 7A, two students are pushing on opposite
sides of a box. Both students are pushing with an equal force but in opposite directions.
When two or more forces act on an object at the same time, the forces

combine to form the net force. The net force on the box in Figure 7A is zero because the two
forces cancel each other. Forces on an object that are equal in size and opposite in direction
are called balanced forces.

Unbalanced Forces
Another example of how forces combine is shown in Figure 7B. When two students are
pushing with unequal forces in opposite directions, a net force occurs in the direction of the
larger force. When forces combine to produce a net force that is not zero, the forces acting on
the object are unbalanced forces. The net force that causes the box to accelerate will be the
difference between the two forces because they are in opposite directions. In Figure 7C, the
students are pushing on the box in the same direction. These forces are combined, or added
together, because they are exerted on the box in the same direction. The net force that acts on
this box is found by adding the two forces together.

Unbalanced Forces Change Velocity

Course: General Science and Environment, Department of Finance, Course Number F110 Page 9
When the forces acting on an object are balanced, the velocity of an object doesn’t change. If
you and a friend push on a door from opposite sides with the same size force, the door
doesn’t move. The net force is zero and the forces are balanced. But if you push harder, the
door moves in the direction of your push. The velocity the door, or any object, changes only
when the forces on it are unbalanced.

Course: General Science and Environment, Department of Finance, Course Number F110 Page 10