For centuries and millennia, humanity has been faced with many natural phenomena, which were not always able to explain. Weather changes, the movement of celestial bodies, plant growth, light of the flame, the change of seasons - all these processes for our ancestors seemed mysterious mysteries of nature. Gradually, mankind came to an explanation of the material nature of many of them: some earlier, others relatively recently. Entire sections of science have arisen exploring various natural phenomena.
What did our ancestors observe most often? The change of day and night, cold and heat, the movement of clouds and the sun across the sky, rain and thunder, a breath of wind, the germination of grain through the soil, freezing water and melting ice. Most of the observed were mechanical phenomena, that is, associated with the movement and movement of various bodies, both living and nonliving. These include the growth of grass, and the movement of the moon in the sky.
Mechanical phenomena, examples of which are found everywhere, along with many others have been studied by mankind for centuries. The initial knowledge of mankind about the world over time has grown into a harmonious system. Entire branches of science have appeared that specialize in the study of various processes. A physicist studies the mechanical phenomena, more precisely, its section, called kinematics - the science of the motion and movement of bodies. The modern concepts of kinematics are based on the postulates of classical Newtonian mechanics. They are based on a mechanistic idea of the structure of the world around us, which dominated science until the beginning of the twentieth century. These ideas are completely true and justified in terms of movements that occur at relatively low speeds (we are not talking about the speed of light) and with objects whose size is much less than the distance traveled by them.
In general, mechanical phenomena are a variation of the group of physical phenomena. Physical phenomena include those in which there is no transformation of one substance into another. In this case, the aggregate state of a substance may change (water passes into ice), but this is one and the same substance. The phenomena of interactions of different substances with the subsequent formation of new ones are already being studied by another science - chemistry.
Mechanical phenomena are not the only ones in physics. In addition to them, physics studies the electrical phenomena that occur when electric charges arise, move, and interact (electric current, lightning, telegraph), magnetic (magnetic attraction of metal objects, the compass turns north), optical ones that occur when light is reflected and refracted (mirages, rainbow, reflection of objects in the mirror and casting a shadow by it), as well as thermal (melting snow, fog, boiling water) and atomic (atomic explosion).
Of course, mechanical phenomena are among the most studied. The science that studies them, mechanics, sets as its main task the determination of the location of the body in the surrounding space at any arbitrary moment in time. The movement of a body in mechanics is considered not by itself, but in relation to other bodies, one of them can be taken as the initial one when counting. The movement is considered in the coordinate system along three mutually perpendicular axes having a common reference point.
Relativity of movement is also taken into account - the body can move relative to some bodies and not move relative to others. There are concepts of movement and the path traveled by bodies. Thus, the mechanics studying the motion of bodies, the main task is to find the position of the body at any time.
Of great importance in the study of mechanical phenomena are the concepts of speed and time necessary to determine the distance traveled. The science of the motion of bodies also considers different types of motion - translational, rotational, mixed.
Physics as a science that studies the infinite variety of natural phenomena (mechanical and not only), of course, is one of the most interesting and fascinating branches of knowledge.