A free body diagram, sometimes called a force diagram, is a pictorial device, often a rough working sketch, used by engineers and physicists to analyze the forces and moments acting on a body. The body itself may consist of multiple components, an automobile for example, or just a part of a component, a short section of a beam for example, anything in fact that may be considered to act as a single body, if only for a moment. A whole series of such diagrams may be necessary to analyze forces in a complex problem. The free body in a free body diagram is not free of constraints, it is just that the constraints have been replaced by arrows representing the forces and moments they generate.
Read more about Free Body Diagram: Purpose, Construction, Example: A Block On An Inclined Plane
Famous quotes containing the words free, body and/or diagram:
“It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91)
“Since body and soul are radically different from one another and belong to different worlds, the destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul, any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed.”
—Oscar Cullman. Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament, ch. 1, Epworth Press (1958)
“If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)