Structures - Outcome 1 - Forces and Moments Introduction

First of all we needed to revise some concepts from Intermediate 2:

Mass: Is the bulk of an object - the amount of "stuff" which makes up a body.
Weight: Is the force that body has due to the Earth's Gravitational Field strength (9.81m/s/s) because F = m.a
Moment: The turning effect of a force.  It is found using: M=Fd (force x distance)

We then reminded ourselves of the conditions of equilibrium:

And from that did some work on moments:

Using R1 as our pivot we could use moments to find R2:

Then use the vertical forces to find R1:

In Higher, however, we will also have to deal with forces which act at an angle.  To be able to work with these forces we must be able to convert a force into its horizontal and vertical components: