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I ordered a copy, should be here in a few days. I'll let you know.
guitarphysics said:Whoa, new edition- that's awesome :D! Has the SR section been updated??
guitarphysics said:I checked a few places, and arrived at this http://assets.cambridge.org/97805211/98110/frontmatter/9780521198110_frontmatter.pdf
which is probably the preface you're referring to. From what I can tell, the SR section has actually been improved quite a lot- it now has more discussion on vector transformations and spacetime diagrams (which the first edition really lacks). They also have more extensive discussions on Newton's laws and energy, which is pretty cool, but apparently they omitted the chapter on mathematical methods (mostly div grad and curl). As far as I can tell, that stuff+more examples throughout the text+fixing errata is all the stuff they've changed (which is actually a decent amount).
NathanaelNolk said:Do you think one could take this as a first course in classical mechanics ? If it's too hard to start with it, which textbook would you recommend instead ?
NathanaelNolk said:Thanks Verty, your answer was exactly what I was looking for. I'm not worried about physical intuition, I was more worried about the math (I haven't done Calc III so far, and I was a bit worried about it). I was already thinking about Walter Lewin's lectures as I watched a few lectures of 18.01 on YouTube. I guess that K&K's introduction to mechanics and Walter Lewin's lectures will give me a good grasp of classical mechanics. By the way, are the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics included in K&K ?
NathanaelNolk said:Thanks Verty, your answer was exactly what I was looking for. I'm not worried about physical intuition, I was more worried about the math (I haven't done Calc III so far, and I was a bit worried about it). I was already thinking about Walter Lewin's lectures as I watched a few lectures of 18.01 on YouTube. I guess that K&K's introduction to mechanics and Walter Lewin's lectures will give me a good grasp of classical mechanics. By the way, are the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics included in K&K ?
exo said:Is a solution manual available for K&K?
Ok, that should work perfectly then, thank you for your help. I think I'll go with Taylor's Classical Mechanics after K&K's.verty said:If you learn multivariable calculus at the same time (on a demand basis if you like), you will be fine. In a way, it should help to make MV Calc easier to learn.
The word "Lagrangian" does not appear in the index, that is beyond the scope of this book. (But for example, MIT used to follow it with Goldstein, according to their OCW site.)
td21 said:This is a good book immediately after Halliday, but if you want a higher level of classical mechanics than this book but not to the level of Goldstein, i would suggest these two:
1. David Morin's book : https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521876222/?tag=pfamazon01-20
2. Marion's book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0534408966/?tag=pfamazon01-20
Here is a useful pageBlaugrana said:Seeing as the Kleppner/Purcell texts are regarded as high quality complements for learning about Mechanics and Electromagnetism, are there any other texts that cover the other major topics such as Thermodynamics/Waves/Particle physics with a similar level of rigor?
robphy said:
robphy said: