The developments of Analytical Mechanics which culminated on the elaboration of F = ma

• Autor(a) principal: Sitko, Camila Maria
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Caderno Brasileiro de Ensino de Física (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/fisica/article/view/2175-7941.2019v36n1p158

Newton's law and F = ma are different principles. About sixty years of conceptual and mathematical developments were necessary for the Second Law of Motion could be elaborated, around 1752 to 1776, by Leonhard Euler. In this research, we discuss the main factors referring to the construction of this law, which made possible for Euler, and no other, to obtain the Second Law of Motion, as we know it today. We also discuss what was being done in mechanics at early eighteenth century and how it contributed for the elaboration of the conceptual bases, thus making possible the emergence of the Second Law of  Motion  as  a general principle of mechanics, such as the search for generalization of principles, the introduction of analytical mechanics, with new techniques and mathematical tools, the study of certain problems, the unification of concepts and the elaboration of alternative bases for mechanics, like the variational principles. These achievements contributed so that Euler could refine and extend Newton’s Law to much larger degree of problems.