AP Practice

Dynamics

In AP Physics 1, dynamics is all about understanding why things move. While kinematics talks about how things move (like speed and direction), dynamics explains the cause of that motion — which is usually a force.

The main idea in dynamics comes from Newton’s Second Law, which says that force equals mass times acceleration (F = ma). This just means that if you push something, how fast it speeds up depends on how heavy it is and how hard you push. Newton’s First Law (about objects staying still or moving unless something acts on them) and his Third Law (for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction) are also super important in dynamics.

There are different types of forces, like gravity, friction, tension, and the normal force (the one that pushes up from the ground). Free-body diagrams show all the forces acting on an object, which helps us figure out how it will move. Dynamics is a big part of AP Physics 1 because it helps explain pretty much all the motion we see in real life. It’s the foundation for understanding more complex physics stuff later on.