In this chapter you will study the effect of forces acting on particles. First you will learn how to replace two or more forces acting on a given particle by a single force having the same effect as the original forces. This single equivalent force is the resultant of the original forces acting on the particle. Later the relations which exist among the various forces acting on a particle in a state of equilibrium will be derived and used to determine some of the forces acting on the particle.

The use of the word particle does not imply that our study will be limited to that of small corpuscles. What it means is that the size and shape of the bodies under consideration will not significantly affect the solution of the problems treated in this chapter and that all the forces acting on a given body will be assumed to be applied at the same point. Since such an assumption is verified in many practical applications, you will be able to solve a number of engineering problems in this chapter.

The first part of the chapter is devoted to the study of forces contained in a single plane, and the second part to the analysis of forces in three-dimensional space.