Description

For thirty years this has been the acknowledged standard in advanced classical mechanics courses. This classic text enables students to make connections between classical and modern physics - an indispensable part of a physicist's education. In this edition, Beams Medal winner Charles Poole and John Safko have updated the text to include the latest topics, applications, and notation, to reflect today's physics curriculum. They introduce students to the increasingly important role that nonlinearities play in contemporary applications of classical mechanics. New numerical exercises help students to develop skills in how to use computer techniques to solve problems in physics. Mathematical techniques are presented in detail so that the text remains fully accessible to students who have not had an intermediate course in classical mechanics.

Features

• The classic approach of this leading text has been revised and updated without increasing the overall length of the book.
• Chapter 11 on classical chaos theory builds from the Hamilton-Jacobi theory to introduce nonlinear dynamics and fractal dimensionality as it relates to classical mechanics.
• Chapter 7 now presents special relativity using the standard real metric (in lieu of the complex Minkowski space) and coordinate-free notation, and includes a brief introduction to the concepts of general relativity.
• A section on the Euler and Lagrange exact solutions to the three-body problem has been added to Chapter 3.
• A section on the damped driven oscillator as an example of the workings of the Josephson junction has been added to Chapter 6.
• Chapter 12 on Canonical Perturbation Theory has been streamlined and the mathematics has been simplified.
• Approximately 45 new problems, mostly in Chapters One through Eight and Eleven.
• Problem sets are now helpfully divided into 'Derivations' and 'Exercises.'

Table of Contents

 1. Survey of the Elementary Principles.


 2. Variational Principles and Lagrange's Equations.


UPDATED! 3. The Central Force Problem.


 4. The Kinematics of Rigid Body Motion.


 5. The Rigid Body Equations of Motion.


UPDATED! 6. Oscillations.


REVISED! 7. The Classical Mechanics of the Special Theory of Relativity.


 8. The Hamiltonian Equations of Motion.


 9. Canonical Transformations.


10. Hamilton-Jacobi Theory and Action Angle Variables.


NEW! 11. Classical Chaos.


REVISED! 12. Canonical Perturbation Theory.


13. Introduction to Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Formulations for Continuous Systems and Fields.


Appendixes.


Select Bibliography.


Index.