#72 in Science & math books
Use arrows to jump to the previous/next product

Reddit mentions of Classical Mechanics (3rd Edition)

Sentiment score: 11
Reddit mentions: 16

We found 16 Reddit mentions of Classical Mechanics (3rd Edition). Here are the top ones.

Classical Mechanics (3rd Edition)
Buying options
View on Amazon.com
or
Specs:
Height9.37006 Inches
Length7.71652 Inches
Number of items1
Weight2.83514468932 Pounds
Width1.5748 Inches

idea-bulb Interested in what Redditors like? Check out our Shuffle feature

Shuffle: random products popular on Reddit

Found 16 comments on Classical Mechanics (3rd Edition):

u/dargscisyhp · 7 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion

I'd like to give you my two cents as well on how to proceed here. If nothing else, this will be a second opinion. If I could redo my physics education, this is how I'd want it done.

If you are truly wanting to learn these fields in depth I cannot stress how important it is to actually work problems out of these books, not just read them. There is a certain understanding that comes from struggling with problems that you just can't get by reading the material. On that note, I would recommend getting the Schaum's outline to whatever subject you are studying if you can find one. They are great books with hundreds of solved problems and sample problems for you to try with the answers in the back. When you get to the point you can't find Schaums anymore, I would recommend getting as many solutions manuals as possible. The problems will get very tough, and it's nice to verify that you did the problem correctly or are on the right track, or even just look over solutions to problems you decide not to try.

Basics

I second Stewart's Calculus cover to cover (except the final chapter on differential equations) and Halliday, Resnick and Walker's Fundamentals of Physics. Not all sections from HRW are necessary, but be sure you have the fundamentals of mechanics, electromagnetism, optics, and thermal physics down at the level of HRW.

Once you're done with this move on to studying differential equations. Many physics theorems are stated in terms of differential equations so really getting the hang of these is key to moving on. Differential equations are often taught as two separate classes, one covering ordinary differential equations and one covering partial differential equations. In my opinion, a good introductory textbook to ODEs is one by Morris Tenenbaum and Harry Pollard. That said, there is another book by V. I. Arnold that I would recommend you get as well. The Arnold book may be a bit more mathematical than you are looking for, but it was written as an introductory text to ODEs and you will have a deeper understanding of ODEs after reading it than your typical introductory textbook. This deeper understanding will be useful if you delve into the nitty-gritty parts of classical mechanics. For partial differential equations I recommend the book by Haberman. It will give you a good understanding of different methods you can use to solve PDEs, and is very much geared towards problem-solving.

From there, I would get a decent book on Linear Algebra. I used the one by Leon. I can't guarantee that it's the best book out there, but I think it will get the job done.

This should cover most of the mathematical training you need to move onto the intermediate level physics textbooks. There will be some things that are missing, but those are usually covered explicitly in the intermediate texts that use them (i.e. the Delta function). Still, if you're looking for a good mathematical reference, my recommendation is Lua. It may be a good idea to go over some basic complex analysis from this book, though it is not necessary to move on.

Intermediate

At this stage you need to do intermediate level classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermal physics at the very least. For electromagnetism, Griffiths hands down. In my opinion, the best pedagogical book for intermediate classical mechanics is Fowles and Cassidy. Once you've read these two books you will have a much deeper understanding of the stuff you learned in HRW. When you're going through the mechanics book pay particular attention to generalized coordinates and Lagrangians. Those become pretty central later on. There is also a very old book by Robert Becker that I think is great. It's problems are tough, and it goes into concepts that aren't typically covered much in depth in other intermediate mechanics books such as statics. I don't think you'll find a torrent for this, but it is 5 bucks on Amazon. That said, I don't think Becker is necessary. For quantum, I cannot recommend Zettili highly enough. Get this book. Tons of worked out examples. In my opinion, Zettili is the best quantum book out there at this level. Finally for thermal physics I would use Mandl. This book is merely sufficient, but I don't know of a book that I liked better.

This is the bare minimum. However, if you find a particular subject interesting, delve into it at this point. If you want to learn Solid State physics there's Kittel. Want to do more Optics? How about Hecht. General relativity? Even that should be accessible with Schutz. Play around here before moving on. A lot of very fascinating things should be accessible to you, at least to a degree, at this point.

Advanced

Before moving on to physics, it is once again time to take up the mathematics. Pick up Arfken and Weber. It covers a great many topics. However, at times it is not the best pedagogical book so you may need some supplemental material on whatever it is you are studying. I would at least read the sections on coordinate transformations, vector analysis, tensors, complex analysis, Green's functions, and the various special functions. Some of this may be a bit of a review, but there are some things Arfken and Weber go into that I didn't see during my undergraduate education even with the topics that I was reviewing. Hell, it may be a good idea to go through the differential equations material in there as well. Again, you may need some supplemental material while doing this. For special functions, a great little book to go along with this is Lebedev.

Beyond this, I think every physicist at the bare minimum needs to take graduate level quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. For quantum, I recommend Cohen-Tannoudji. This is a great book. It's easy to understand, has many supplemental sections to help further your understanding, is pretty comprehensive, and has more worked examples than a vast majority of graduate text-books. That said, the problems in this book are LONG. Not horrendously hard, mind you, but they do take a long time.

Unfortunately, Cohen-Tannoudji is the only great graduate-level text I can think of. The textbooks in other subjects just don't measure up in my opinion. When you take Classical mechanics I would get Goldstein as a reference but a better book in my opinion is Jose/Saletan as it takes a geometrical approach to the subject from the very beginning. At some point I also think it's worth going through Arnold's treatise on Classical. It's very mathematical and very difficult, but I think once you make it through you will have as deep an understanding as you could hope for in the subject.

u/thepastry · 4 pointsr/Physics

I just want to point out one thing that everyone seems to be glossing over: when people say that you'll need to review classical mechanics, they aren't talking only about Newtonian Mechanics. The standard treatment of Quantum Mechanics draws heavily from an alternative formulation of classical mechanics known as Hamiltonian Mechanics that I'm willing to bet you didn't cover in your physics education. This field is a bit of a beast in its own right (one of those that can pretty much get as complicated/mathematically taxing as you let it) and it certainly isn't necessary to become an expert in order to understand quantum mechanics. I'm at a bit of a loss to recommend a good textbook for an introduction to this subject, though. I used Taylor in my first course on the subject, but I don't really like that book. Goldstein is a wonderful book and widely considered to be the bible of classical mechanics, but can be a bit of a struggle.

Also, your math education may stand you in better stead than you think. Quantum mechanics done (IMHO) right is a very algebraic beast with all the nasty integrals saved for the end. You're certainly better off than someone with a background only in calculus. If you know calculus in 3 dimensions along with linear algebra, I'd say find a place to get a feel for Hamiltonian mechanics and dive right in to Griffiths or Shankar. (I've never read Shankar, so I can't speak to its quality directly, but I've heard only good things. Griffiths is quite understandable, though, and not at all terse.) If you find that you want a bit more detail on some of the topics in math that are glossed over in those treatments (like properties of Hilbert Space) I'd recommend asking r/math for a recommendation for a functional analysis textbook. (Warning:functional analysis is a bit of a mindfuck. I'd recommend taking these results on faith unless you're really curious.) You might also look into Eisberg and Resnick if you want a more historical/experimentally motivated treatment.

All in all, I think its doable. It is my firm belief that anyone can understand quantum mechanics (at least to the extent that anyone understands quantum mechanics) provided they put in the effort. It will be a fair amount of effort though. Above all, DO THE PROBLEMS! You can't actually learn physics without applying it. Also, you should be warned that no matter how deep you delve into the subject, there's always farther to go. That's the wonderful thing about physics: you can never know it all. There just comes a point where the questions you ask are current research questions.

Good Luck!

u/ManInsideTheHelm · 4 pointsr/Physics

For anyone looking for beautiful formalism in classical mechanics, "Classical Mechanics" by Herbert Goldstein (link) is amazing. It paints the classical view of the world in such a clear cut way!

Even if it is not necessary for a modern physicist, it helps understand the scientific mindset pre-quantum and relativity frameworks. And some of the problems in the books are incredibly satisfying to solve.

u/RobusEtCeleritas · 3 pointsr/AskPhysics

Goldstein is good.

u/jnnnnn · 2 pointsr/Physics

Quite right. Some more advanced concepts that might be useful are

  • group theory (I can't provide a reference for this, sorry) and
  • Lagrangians (this book is good).
u/ZBoson · 2 pointsr/askscience

Any mechanics text targeted for the standard junior level mechanics course for majors will cover it. I used Fowles and Cassiday when I took it. I'm not really sure what else is standard. The standard text in grad courses is Goldstein, which should be approachable by an undergrad at least. If you're crazy and a classical mechanics junkie like I was as an undergrad, Landau and Lifshitz vol1 is a beautiful treatment (that you unfortunately probably already need to have seen the material once to appreciate. Oh well. Like I said: if you're crazy). The issue here is that sometimes undergrad courses will skip these (as I learned, amazed, when I was encountering other grad students that hadn't done Lagrangian mechanics before) so make sure you read those chapters and do the problems: quantum mechanics is done in a hamiltonian formulation, and quantum field theory in a Lagrangian formulation (the latter is because the Lagriangian treatment is automatically relativistici)

I never had a course specifically on waves. It's something you'll likely hit pretty well in whatever non-freshman E&M course you take. Beware though that some courses targeted at engineers will do AC circuits at the expense of waves. But the text is still useable to look into it yourself.

u/MahatmaGandalf · 2 pointsr/AskPhysics

The books others have suggested here are all great, but if you've never seen physics with calculus before, you may want to begin with something more accessible. Taylor and Goldstein are aimed at advanced undergraduates and spend almost no time on the elementary formulation of Newtonian mechanics. They're designed to teach you about more advanced methods of mechanics, primarily the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations.

Therefore, I suggest you start with a book that's designed to be introductory. I don't have a particular favorite, but you may enjoy Serway & Jewett or Halliday & Resnick.

Many of us learned out of K&K, as it's been something of a standard in honors intro courses since the seventies. (Oh my god, a new edition? Why?!) However, most of its readers these days have already seen physics with calculus once before, and many of them still find it a difficult read. You may want to see if your school's library has a copy so you can try before you buy.

If you do enjoy the level of K&K, then I strongly encourage you to find a copy of Purcell when you get to studying electricity and magnetism. If you are confident with the math, it is far and away the best book for introductory E&M—there's no substitute! (And personally, I'd strongly suggest you get the original or the second edition used. The third edition made the switch to SI units, which are not well-suited to electromagnetic theory.)

By the way: if you don't care what edition you're getting, and you're okay with international editions, you can get these books really cheaply. For instance: Goldstein, S&J, K&K, Purcell.

Finally, if you go looking for other books or asking other people, you should be aware that "analytical mechanics" often means those more advanced methods you learn in a second course on mechanics. If you just say "mechanics with calculus", people will get the idea of what you're looking for.

u/maruahm · 2 pointsr/Physics

I heard good things about it, but honestly as an applied mathematician I found its table of contents too lackluster. Its coverage appears to be in a weird spot between "for physicists" and "for mathematicians" and I don't know who its target audience is. I think the standard recommendation for classical mechanics from the physics side is Goldstein, which is a perfectly good book with plenty of math!

For an actual mathematicians' take on classical mechanics, you'll have to wait until you take more advanced math, namely real analysis and differential geometry. Common references are Spivak and Tu. When you have that background, I think Arnold has the best mathematical treatment of classical mechanics.

u/shavera · 2 pointsr/askscience

Okay so if it evolves towards "all futures" simultaneously, how can we predict the motion of a ball in the air? Which timelike axis is it following along to give the motion with which we're familiar?

What I'm trying to say is that while you may have an interesting idea or an idea that interests you in answers, now is the time to then start learning what we already know about our universe so that you can either see where the idea is wrong, or learn how to formulate it in the mathematical framework of physics. When I was in high school and early undergrad I too had a lot of ideas along these lines. But when I learned about classical mechanics and general relativity and quantum mechanics and so on I was able to see why those ideas didn't work and just how cool the ideas we do have are. So if you have some experience with calculus (including multiple dimension calculus, partial derivatives, and preferably some linear algebra) then maybe try and work through some classical mechanics textbooks (like Goldstein, Poole, and Safko).

u/ari6av · 2 pointsr/hebrew

I just double checked - this one in particular is from the preface to the first edition of this book. The photo in the OP is of an edition that's laid out differently from mine, but the text is the same. What gave it away for me was the Cambridge 1950, and that I remember seeing the roshei teivos when I first got the book a few years back.

u/iorgfeflkd · 1 pointr/askscience

If you want to get more advanced, this is the book I used when I studied advanced (Lagrangian and Hamiltonian) mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mechanics-3rd-Herbert-Goldstein/dp/0201657023

(for pirates)

The book I used in first year physics was Giancolli, and in second year it was just my professor's crazy handwritten notes. Here are his crazy notes for advanced mechanics; the ones for Newtonian aren't up anymore.

u/wire_man · 1 pointr/askscience

A sufficient resource for explaining how to get to Classical Mechanics can be found here.

The idea is that if you have quantities on the surface of a geometry and quantities in the tangent bundle(where quantities like velocities lie), then your dynamics can be described by the interaction of the two under a small set of constraints. These constraints are set by the base axioms and principles of your understanding of the system.

Having these, you can formulate your dynamics which ever way you want. In other words, The Lagrangian is an arbitrary choice. Strictly speaking, it is a choice that physicists use because it makes that algebra easier. The Euler-Lagrange equations are the result of this, and can be used to describe the dynamics of the system. Similarly, once conservation laws in the Lagrangian have been established, the Hamiltonian can be calculated, and from there, invariants in the Hamiltonian can be used.

u/mechanician87 · 1 pointr/askscience

No problem, glad you find it interesting. If you want to know more, Steve Strogatz's Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos is a good place to start and is generally very accessible. It talks about how to tell what regions of phase space are stable vs unstable, for example, and how chaos arises out of all of this. Overall it is a good read and has a lot of interesting examples (as is typical of a lot of his books).

For more on the Hamiltonian mechanics in particular (albeit at a more advanced level), the classic text is Goldstein's Classical Mechanics. Its definitely more dense, but if you can push through it and get at what the math is saying its a really interesting subject. For example, in principle, you can do a coordinate transformation where you decouple all the generalized momentum - coordinate pairs and do a sort of modal analysis on a system where you would never be able to do so otherwise (these are called action-angle variables)

u/blueboybob · 1 pointr/HomeworkHelp

halliday and resnick for general physics

1 - goldstein

2 - griffith

3 -

4 - griffith or jackson

u/functor7 · 1 pointr/math

A solid intro book to QM is Zetilli, but as others have mentioned you might want to learn some Classical Mechanics first and for that I recommend Landau or Goldstein. Landau is usually more of a grad book and Goldstein is an undergrad one.

u/lysa_m · 1 pointr/math

Very good question. The answer is harder than you might think. It's really awful, when you get right down to it.

To start with, you can find the mathematical derivation of the behavior of an idealized spinning top in Goldstein, and it is surprisingly complicated; the explanation in the link from drabus' post describes some of it.

For a coin, it's actually quite a bit worse, because coind are not like tops in one very important way. There are two Euler angles (one that describes the slope of the face, and one that describes the direction the coin is facing without taking into account the slope) that behave like the angles for the spinning top, but the third angle ends up being equivalent to the distance the coin has rolled on the surface of the table (at least for an idealized coin, infinitely thin and with no slipping). Try to think about how that works; experiment with a real coin and a real top on the surface of a table to get a feel for what I'm talking about.

That third "angle" is really annoying mathematically, because it allows extra mathematical and physical wiggle room: Even if you tell me what all three angles are, I still don't know where on the table the coin is, even if I know where you started from and what your coordinate system is. For example, I could roll the coin around a circular path, or instead along a straight line, and get two different results.

This kind of ambiguity arises from the fact that there is only one angle representing the dynamics of the system at any point in time (the angle through which the coin has rolled while it's spinning), but two overall degrees of freedom that the coin can access by changing that one degree of freedom (the two dimensions of the surface of the table). The technical term for a system with this kind of behavior is non-holonomic, and it's in general a pain in the butt to analyze these systems.

As a side note, a real life top actually behaves a bit like a coin rather than the ideal version with a fixed vertex usually described; tops tend to roll along the surface of the table as they tip over, just as coins roll a bit as they spin. And coins, of course, skip a little, which is why they make that rattling sound as they spin. All of that makes the behavior and the mathematics even more complicated; most people have given up on the problem a long time before they ever arrived at this point.