At heart, science is about how things evolve over time. And most things change over time because they move, or the pieces of which they are made move. This is true of inanimate objects, like stars and volcanos, as well as living things, like bacteria and you. Motion underlies phenomena where you would not suspect it. For example, electric current is nothing but the motion of electric charges. Understanding motion is a prerequisite for understanding all of physics and a heap of chemistry, biology and engineering.

Mechanics is what we call the study of motion. We start by learning how to describe motion: we ned a precise language that tells us, with mathematical precision, how any one given object is going from here to there and rotating or shaking on its way. But painting a picture of moving object is not enough. We must find out what causes motion and how these causes produce motion. Then putting the two together, the how and the why, we can predict a motion given a particular situation once we identify all possible causes of motion.

Kinematics is the study of the "how" of motion, while Dynamics is what we call the "why" of motion. And this is what we study in this course.