Classical mechanics worked problems book

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~djmorin/book.html

by forkandwait • 11 years ago

55 8 11 years ago

people.fas.harvard.edu

forkandwait2• 11 years ago

I am currently about to finish Chap 6 on momentum, and working through this book has been one of the high points of this year for me. I have done all the problems but one, and I always try first, then look a little bit, then (often) throw my hands up and just try to memorize the answer. I also makes me tear my hair and think I am infernally stupid, but hey, it's physics.

javajosh• 11 years ago

You're not stupid, it's just that some of the most intelligent people in the world have been drawn to the subject, most of which is actually quite new (consider that the atom was really only discovered in the 20th century!). The chains of inference are brilliant, and the amazing thing is how teachers treat the subject as a mundane set of tools to get through problem sets (not that David Morin does this).

There's this air of understanding that isn't justified. As Feynman famously pointed out, forget about not understanding quantum mechanics - no-one really understands Maxwell's equations because to do so would be to somehow have an intuition for a function that maps each point in a volume of space to 6 numbers (the 3 components of the E and B vectors at each point). This intuition is impossible in the general case, but we fool ourselves into thinking we have that intuition because the pedagogy focuses on special cases.

Anyway, don't be too hard on yourself. You are walking in the footsteps of some of the greatest minds in human history, and even though they've cleared a path, the going is still rather steep.

zentiggr• 11 years ago

Logged in just to praise that last sentence... very well put.

iaw• 11 years ago

Anecdotally, I not met a single person in my academic or professional career that found Physics 'easy.' I was good in the subject and still found that the problems could still be quite challenging.

My suspicion is that Einstein and Feynman both struggled at times with the basics...

keithpeter2• 11 years ago

Others have reassured you that this is perfectly normal when learning physics! Sets of worked examples have a long history in the subject - Newton provided examples in the Principia and you could argue that Galileo's dialogues are basically worked examples with the mistakes shown first.

A couple of rhetorical questions...

Do you find you can get a bit further with each new example within a chapter after reading the solution to the last one?

Is the author building up the complexity in small steps and inviting you to take one new step with each problem?

Are you trying to apply the author's problem solving strategies as outlined in Chapter 1 (very generous of the author to give that out as a sample)?

forkandwait2• 11 years ago

To answer all at once -- Morin does build in some repetition, so often there will be 4 or 5 problems more or less alike, and by #3, I can start to get them pretty well, though #1 might be impossible. However, sometimes it doesn't go quite as smoothly. And yes, his chapter #1 is awesome and useful. I mostly check my answers with limits and units.

Also -- I read a chapter from his bigger book with pencil, often copying out, before I start a chapter in his little book.

I don't have any other resources -- I hate watching videos on the computer at night, no school that is convenient, etc. So sometimes I feel like I just have to get everything from his solutions b/c I don't get his lectures first.

Finally, ... My plan is to work through this book by the end of the year hopefully, then do Astrom and Murray's feedback book, then come back to Morin's red mechanics book. And then who knows -- that is probably 30 months out.

nicolapede• 11 years ago

These are books I would have liked to have when I studied Mechanics. Just a couple of very nice point spotted on chapter 1 of Introduction to Classical Mechanic: the dimensional analysis example and the linearization of ODEs are worth the reading.

Classical mechanics worked problems book

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