Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/sicm-html/book.html

by octatoan • 11 years ago

89 20 11 years ago

groups.csail.mit.edu

sasvari• 11 years ago

previous submissions with discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6947257

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1581696

cmrx64• 11 years ago

I love love love this book. Its explanations are wonderful and for someone deeply entrenched in CS like me it is a great approach to learning modern classical mechanics.

cesarbs• 11 years ago

How much of a math background do you need to understand it?

paulpauper• 11 years ago

at least a couple years of calculus and linear algebra

agumonkey• 11 years ago

I've read somewhere that the Lagrangian approach was too computationally intensive; leading to explosion of possible paths and dimensions. Anyone can confirm ?

ble• 11 years ago

Too computationally intensive for what?

The Lagrangian approach is kinda great. If you can describe the potential energy and the kinetic energy of a system as two functions of whatever variables, Lagrangian mechanics allows you to derive the differential equations that govern the evolution of that system for free.

There's absolutely zero fucking around with forces, torques, etc. to get yourself a set of equations with which to model system behavior. You do have to add one constraint equation for every constraint on the system, but this is way easier than trying to formulate a set of differential equations that just happens to satisfy an arbitrary set of constraints.

I don't know of a reason why Lagrangian mechanics would tie one to a particular algorithm or class of algorithm; pretty much no matter how you do it, if you're modeling a mechanical system, you're solving some differential equations in one way or another.

TL:DR; can't confirm at this time

onedognight• 11 years ago

In the case of classical mechanics, the Lagrangian approach leads to exactly the same equations. The reason to learn it is that the Lagrangian approach generalizes and is used in nearly all physics[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian#Selected_fields

pavpanchekha• 11 years ago

For numeric solving, perhaps. This book is focused on symbolic computation.

MaxScheiber• 11 years ago

Is there a solutions manual available for this book? I couldn't find any mention of one on the MIT Press website, and a quick Google search wasn't helpful.

PaulHoule• 11 years ago

Frankly I find it uninteresting because it doesn't talk much about chaos, which is the normal condition of classical mechanics. You certainly can model aspects of resonance with classical perturbation theory, but the most remarkable think about classical perturbation theory is that it doesn't work very well.

pckspcks3• 11 years ago

Yes it does. I'm confused why you believe it doesn't....

aswanson• 11 years ago

Any pdf downloadable version?

bitsofpancake• 11 years ago

Link on Wikipedia: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxVCLS4f8Sg5MDIzMzJmZDQtZGE...

userbinator• 11 years ago

It looks like the result of combining the first volume of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Course_of_Theoretical_Physics with SICP.

pckspcks3• 11 years ago

I found this one of the most useful books I've read, but less so for the physics (which was mostly an intellectual curiosity), and more so for understanding how to write good code.

In it, Sussman shows you how to:

* Write a Lagrangian

* Symbolically convert it into Lagrange's Equations

* Compile those into native code

* Numerically integrate the with an optimized numerical algorithm to get a path of motion.

And all of this, with beautiful, clean, concise, simple code.

A-fing-mazing.

rr56• 11 years ago

Is anybody familiar with any Scheme notebooks preferably with math.js or something similar?

Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics

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