 Hi. Welcome to Sailor.org's Mechanics One course. My name is Sean Conner. I'm the archivist at Sailor.org and normally I help our consultants find resources for the courses over at Sailor.org, but today I'm welcoming you to the Mechanics One course. This course is all about things. Buildings, containers, pipes, ridges, things that are supposed to stay still, and the forces that act on them, which tend to make them move or collapse or fall apart or break. How does a bridge withstand tons of cars driving over it every day? How much snow can pile up on that old plastic picnic table in the yard before it begins to bend or break? In this course we'll be looking at the mechanics of things. Why they break or don't break. Why they stay still or move. The lessons you learn here will help you understand everyday things, the things you see around you, and why they happen the way they do. And if you decide to pursue a career in engineering, these lessons will help you be able to design, test, and manufacture safe products. This is a college level course. Most schools split their intro to mechanic courses into two separate courses, one on statics and one on solids. This course will cover both. We'll begin with statics or objects that are not accelerating. Objects that are at rest, not moving, or at least moving at a constant speed. Mostly we'll be dealing with stationary objects. A book, a desk, the building down the street, and we'll be asking what happens when different forces act on these objects. What happens if I push the book off the desk or if I twist the top off the bottom? We'll be talking about solids next and the different forces that can affect the shape or form of solids. What happens when you chew a piece of gum or pinch a piece of clay? What's going on there? We'll also be looking at how different forces can actually break or fracture a solid. Obviously this is helpful to an engineer who's trying to design something new. The engineer should ask him or herself, what can I do to make this fail? The ultimate goal is to be able to design products that won't break or buckle. Before we begin, there's a few reminders I'd like to give to you. First, this course will take about 100 to 110 hours to complete. Now that's a lot of time, but it's also similar to what a typical semester course would be at a college. Try to develop a schedule and set aside some time each day to complete the work. Second, the materials in this course are taken from a variety of sources. For one thing we have wonderful lectures from Dr. Walter Lewin of MIT. We have readings from Dr. Negobon of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and we also have materials from our staff here at Sailor.org. Finally, while each unit has an end of unit assessment, your whole grade in this course will come from the two-hour final exam. A score of 70% on that is passing, and you'll get your grade as soon as you quick submit. Good luck.