Mechanical Basics

In order to understand some of the information presented on this site, it is sometimes helpful to have a handy refresher for background material which might not be totally familiar.

These subjects might have been somewhat of a pain when you encountered them in school. But the “need for speed” sometimes makes it less painful to review old subjects, and maybe gain some new knowledge. (Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this page, right?)

I have tried to present the subjects in a painless way, using as little math as possible, and with as much reference as possible to examples everyone knows but may not have correlated.

The predominant system of units used here is “pounds-inches-seconds”. For those interested in “metrification“, there are countless sources for conversion factors.