A Modern Approach To Classical Mechanics

In this book we describe the evolution of Classical Mechanics from Newton's laws via Lagrange's and Hamilton's theories with strong emphasis on integrability versus chaotic behavior.In the second edition of the book we have added historical remarks and references to historical sources important in the evolution of classical mechanics.

In this book we describe the evolution of Classical Mechanics from Newton's laws via Lagrange's and Hamilton's theories with strong emphasis on integrability versus chaotic behavior.In the second edition of the book we have added historical remarks and references to historical sources important in the evolution of classical mechanics.

A comprehensive graduate-level textbook on classical dynamics with many worked examples and over 200 homework exercises, first published in 1998.

Presents classical mechanics as a thriving field with strong connections to modern physics, with numerous worked examples and homework problems.

This new edition of Classical Mechanics, aimed at undergraduate physics and engineering students, presents ina user-friendly style an authoritative approach to the complementary subjects of classical mechanics and relativity. The text starts with a careful look at Newton's Laws, before applying them in one dimension to oscillations and collisions. More advanced applications - including gravitational orbits and rigid body dynamics - are discussed after the limitations of Newton's inertial frames have been highlighted through an exposition of Einstein's Special Relativity. Examples given throughout are often unusual for an elementary text, but are made accessible to the reader through discussion and diagrams. Updates and additions for this new edition include: New vector notation in Chapter 1 An enhanced discussion of equilibria in Chapter 2 A new section on a body falling a large distance towards a gravitational source in Chapter 2 New sections in Chapter 8 on general rotation about a fixed principal axes, simple examples of principal axes and principal moments of inertia and kinetic energy of a body rotating about a fixed axis New sections in chapter 9: Foucault pendulum and free rotation of a rigid body; the latter including the famous tennis racquet theorem Enhanced chapter summaries at the end of each chapter Novel problems with numerical answers A solutions manual is available at: www.wiley.com/go/mccall

Classical dynamics is traditionally treated as an early stage in the development of physics, a stage that has long been superseded by more ambitious theories. Here, in this book, classical dynamics is treated as a subject on its own as well as a research frontier. Incorporating insights gained over the past several decades, the essential principles of classical dynamics are presented, while demonstrating that a number of key results originally considered only in the context of quantum theory and particle physics, have their foundations in classical dynamics. Graduate students in physics and practicing physicists will welcome the present approach to classical dynamics that encompasses systems of particles, free and interacting fields, and coupled systems. Lie groups and Lie algebras are incorporated at a basic level and are used in describing space-time symmetry groups. There is an extensive discussion on constrained systems, Dirac brackets and their geometrical interpretation. The Lie-algebraic description of dynamical systems is discussed in detail, and Poisson brackets are developed as a realization of Lie brackets. Other topics include treatments of classical spin, elementary relativistic systems in the classical context, irreducible realizations of the Galileo and Poincaré groups, and hydrodynamics as a Galilean field theory. Students will also find that this approach that deals with problems of manifest covariance, the no-interaction theorem in Hamiltonian mechanics and the structure of action-at-a-distance theories provides all the essential preparatory groundwork for a passage to quantum field theory. This reprinting of the original text published in 1974 is a testimony to the vitality of the contents that has remained relevant over nearly half a century.

Classical Mechanics is a clear introduction to the subject, combining a user-friendly style with an authoritative approach, whilst requiring minimal prerequisite mathematics - only elementary calculus and simple vectors are presumed. The text starts with a careful look at Newton's Laws, before applying them in one dimension to oscillations and collisions. More advanced applications - including gravitational orbits, rigid body dynamics and mechanics in rotating frames - are deferred until after the limitations of Newton's inertial frames have been highlighted through an exposition of Einstein's Special Relativity. The examples given throughout are often unusual for an elementary text, although they are made accessible through discussion and diagrams. Complete revision summaries are given at the end of each chapter, together with problems designed to be both illustrative and challenging. Features: * Comprehensive introduction to classical mechanics and relativity * Many novel examples, e.g. stability of the universe, falling cats, crickets bats and snooker * Includes many problems with numerical answers * Revision notes at the end of each chapter

Inspired by Richard Feynman and J.J. Sakurai, A Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics allows lecturers to expose their undergraduates to Feynman's approach to quantum mechanics while simultaneously giving them a textbook that is well-ordered, logical and pedagogically sound. This book covers all the topics that are typically presented in a standard upper-level course in quantum mechanics, but its teaching approach is new. Rather than organizing his book according to the historical development of the field and jumping into a mathematical discussion of wave mechanics, Townsend begins his book with the quantum mechanics of spin. Thus, the first five chapters of the book succeed in laying out the fundamentals of quantum mechanics with little or no wave mechanics, so the physics is not obscured by mathematics. Starting with spin systems it gives students straightfoward examples of the structure of quantum mechanics. When wave mechanics is introduced later, students should perceive it correctly as only one aspect of quantum mechanics and not the core of the subject.