Modern
Introductory Mechanics, Parts 1 and 2
This is a two semester introductory classical mechanics text, on
the level of Marian and Thorton. It is approximately 320+255
pages long, with 130+106 problems. Part I has been repaired
(the Mac Word version had gotten corrupted) and Part II has been
newly revised (2006). The coverage of material includes some
unusual topics in variational techniques and deterministic chaos.
(Some of the inspiration for the variational material is unpublished
text, “Variational
Mechanics”,
my father wrote.) I have not had a chance to teach the second
semester as often as the first, so the text is not as developed,
with a number of topics lacking and others being treated rather
brusquely. However, my treatment of relativity is more complete
than usual, and I introduce the idea of covariant and contravariant
vectors and tensors, which is unusual at this level. I would
like to add a section on particle accelerators as well as to
discuss particle interactions and decays. I need to add a chapter
on wave motion.
The Archives section discusses the evolution of these chapters,
which is complicated, and has older versions available. Part
I of this text is an exception to my rule of not maintaining OSX
versions, since these chapters were successfully converted to OSX
Mac Word. Part II is still maintained in old Word 5.1, so is not
posted here.
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