Product Description

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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #259693 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 680 pages

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

Customer Reviews

A good text, once the best.
Goldstein's "Classical Mechanics" appeared at the right time. The development of quantum mechanics demanded familiarity with methods of advanced mechanics that no student of physics had been introduced to. Dirac told in a semminar that he didn't know what a Poisson bracket was, when he was constructing his version ot quantum mechanics (where Poisson brackets play a fundamental role). Heisenberg didn't know matrices, in similar circumstances. Max Born did know these things, and actually wrote a superb book on mechanics using them, but it was in German, at an advanced level and called Mechanics of the Atom. The book then available in English was the formidable Whittaker "Analytical Dynamics", whose exercises took sometimes a whole page just to be stated! In this panorama, in the fifties, Addison-Wesley published the beautifully produced Goldstein. It was an instant sensation. In the introduction the author candidly confessed that, in his opinion, a cou! rse in mechanics justified itself only as a preparation for quantum mechanics, and that was clearly the slant of the book. It was extremely well written, except for a disastrous chapter on the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. The exercises were not at the level of the text: you found much better ones in Slater, Frank's "Mechanics", for instance. The references were excellent, commented, and gave the reader a sense of perspective (and of awe, in the company of men like Riemann, Born, Weber...). I loved the book and hated the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Later on the slim book by Landau, Lifshitz, "Mechanics", entered the scene and showed that Goldstein's program could be made better, briefer, and that the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, clearly and sensibly derived, was the jewel of the crown. Not only, in the subsequent volumes of their Theoretical Physics course, they showed how invaluable this Hamilton-Jacobi was, by applying it with great skill in all kinds of problems.! Then, finally, it became clear that mechanics was not dead! : the whole affair of stability, chaos, etc, exploded, and it became impossible to consider mechanics just as a ladder to quantum mechanics. So, even the philosophy of the venerable Goldstein had to be forgotten. Still, Goldstein's Classical Mechanics is alive, possibly now more Classical than Mechanics.

Check also Jose & Saletan
I read the first printing of the third edition.

Cons first.

Some material has been deleted: the discussions of stability, some historical notes along the discussions, correspondence between HJ and Schrodinger Eqn, etc. The nice further references and notes to various other books in the end of each chapter has been omitted, the same thing happen to the extensive bibliography. A lot of typos appear in this new edition. And still no attempts to include advanced mathematical methods from differential geometry, except when discussing SR. Also, no attempt to include some worked examples. The discussions on classical fields has been shortened, a regret if we remember the need to leard classical fields before step into quantum fields.

Pros.

The book became more accessible, in fact some undergrads might be able to cope with this, either after Marion-Thornton or somewhere in the junior-senior year. The discussions on SR use the standard -2 metric instead of the awkward ict. Several discussions on one-forms and GR appeared. More problems. Also there is a new chapter in nonlinear oscillations

Suggestions.

If you want a modern book on classical mechanics check also J.V. Jose and E.J. Saletan, Classical Dynamics: A Contemporary Approach ... it offers roughly the same material PLUS advanced treatment with geometrical methods and differential geometry, and there are extensive discussions on nonlinear dynamics and classical fields. I recommend some instructors to adapt Jose & Saletan for their class, since it is cheaper, more modern, than Goldstein.

A solid book
This is probably the best treatment of Classical Mechanics I've ever read, though, as with anything, it could use some improvement. My only gripe is the usual one with texts like this: There are few if any specific physical instances of formulations that so often serve as a watershed of understanding in physics. For example, in the derivation of the Langrangian, and finally the Hamiltonian, no point for point physical example (say, with a central force like gravity) is offered. It would be nice to see a step by step description of how the Riemann sum over time of the difference in kinetic and potential energies changes as different paths are chosen. I did this and it was beautiful and incredibly enlightening. Once you can _see_ that kind of behavior, you're powerful! It is then easy to generalize to any abstract system. But all else was excellent. If you really want to learn Mechanics, you must start with Goldstein. Recommended preliminaries: Stewart's Calculus; Schaum's Linear Algebra; Halliday, Resnick and Walker's Fundamentals of Physics and Symon's Mechanics.