Physics Diagrams

What is Physics Diagrams?

Physics is the science of all-natural phenomena that we observe and deal with on a day-to-day basis. We see an apple falling from a tree, an object falling from the table, sliding along the plane, an object rolling down the plane; for the mathematical presentation of these phenomena, we draw free-body diagrams and derive equations following these diagrams.

In Physics diagrams, we try to present all the aspects of a specific phenomenon as much as possible. Here, we will discuss the important physics diagrams. 

Physics Diagrams

We all hear the word “Physics”; this subject is not all that difficult when the basic concepts of tough seeming topics of this subject are better understood with the help of Physics diagrams. Physics is all around us, which adds a major benefit to the subject as it creates curiosity to know about our surroundings. Thus developing an interest in the subject becomes an easy task with the help of Physics diagrams.

However, we often ask ourselves one question and that is “Why Diagrams?”

By understanding Physics diagrams, we can visualize various topics and help them retain the concepts for a long period. Learning through diagrams also helps us to pen down the concept in a better way, resulting to fetch more practical knowledge.

For example, drawing a diagram of how a missile would look like, is the basic help to implement the exact prototype and then develop the final missile by ISRO scientists.

In Physics, we also use free-body diagrams in short known as FBD or force diagrams. These kinds of diagrams are graphical illustrations that we use to visualize the applied forces and movements of a body in a given condition, derive mathematical equations for the force applied as well as to calculate the resulting reactions of these applied forces on the objects. 

We must make sure that these FBD’s are not meant to be scaled or accurate; they are just drawn as the problem is being solved or to make our calculations easier.

Important Physics Diagrams

Now, let’s talk about a few important Physics diagrams or Physics-related drawings. 

• Circuit Diagram

A circuit diagram is a representation of how the internals of a socket works.  

A circuit contains a battery, it is a source that offers potential difference across the two ends of the circuit. A resistor that acts as a speed breaker. A path is visualized by an arrow so that when a switch connected to the battery is closed, a potential difference generated across the ends, the current starts flowing through the circuit.

Now, as soon as the current starts flowing, we can observe the functioning of the circuit with the lightning bulb. As the current intensity rises, the speed breaker stops it and saves our circuit from encountering a short circuit. So this is how we can represent our circuit diagram. 

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• Schematic Diagram

You might have heard of an engine that has a source and a sink. A source is an energy taker and a sink is an energy storer or absorber. A speciality in such type of engine is, whatever energy goes on, the same amount of energy gets absorbed after the work is done and retrieved by the source without any loss. Such type of ideal engine is the Carnot Engine and the following is the schematic diagram for the same:

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• Phasor Diagram

We use a phasor diagram to visually represent the phase relationships between two or more sine waves having the same frequency. Image 1 shows a phasor continually rotating, but in actual phasor diagrams are static. Imagine that the phasors are rotating in an anticlockwise direction, the diagram for the same is as follows:

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Every phasor in the diagram has the same angular velocity because it represents/expresses sine waves of identical frequencies. The length of each phasor arm is directly linked with the amplitude of the wave it represents, and the angle between these phasors is the same as that of the angle of the phase difference between the sine waves.

• Ray Diagram

We often need spectacles to view the beautiful world surrounding us, use mirrors like a plane mirror for dressing up, rearview mirrors to view the objects behind us for safe driving, microscopes to study microorganisms, plants, and animals, telescopes to view distant objects. Do you think that all these optical instruments have something to do with diagrams? Yes, they do. They all have a ray diagram to have visual representation because the location of an object on a mirror or lens decides how an image will be formed. So, all the Physics related drawings for ray diagrams help us make our work done systematically and also make our calculations easier. Below are a few ray diagrams for our image representation:

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