Statics is the action of one body on another. A force is either a push or a pull. A force tends to move a body in the direction of its action. The action of a force is characterized by its magnitude, by the direction of its action, and by its point of application. Thus, force is a vector quantity, because its effect depends on the direction as well as on the magnitude of the action. Forces are classified as either contact or body forces. A contact force is produced by direct physical contact; an example is the force exerted on a
Quantity calculus Quantity calculus Quantity calculus is the formal method for describing the mathematical relations between "abstract" physical quantities. (Here the term "calculus" should be understood in its broader sense of "a system of computation", rather than in the sense of differential calculus and integral calculus.) Its roots can be traced to Fourier's concept of dimensional analysis (1822). The basic axiom of quantity calculus is Maxwell's description of a physical quantity as the product of a "numerical value" and a "reference quantity" (i.e. a "unit quantity" or a "unit of measurement"). De Boer summarized the multiplication, division, addition, association and commutation rules