Kinematics is the mathematics of motion, regardless of forces.
When forces are leading, it's called mechanics, or even dynamics.
Great scientists have been fascinated by kinematics, and they tend to be of the mathematically inclined variety, although the subject lends itself very well to nice pictures and, these days, animations. But the math tends to be quite abstract, and the results are sometimes surprisingly subtle.
True to form, this website only touches on subjects which are of direct interest to the practicing engineer. This means that we will only touch very briefly on concepts like poles, polhodes, herpolhodes, and what have you.
With some exceptions, which will only come up in the study of rigid body motion ( like in satellites behaving as gyroscopes, or in airplane dynamic models ), kinematics to us will mean : mechanisms .
See the dropdown menu in the top bar for a list of subjects covered.
Most of these are thorougly practical, with the seeming exception of the somewhat arcane quaternions. These are included following Boltzmann's famous creed : "Nothing is more practical than a good theory".