Physics 171.204

Classical Mechanics

Overview

This course offers an introduction to classical mechanics, continuing the development of concepts introduced in 171.105, however, treating many topics from a more advanced perspective. The course starts with the Lagrangian mechanics,an alternative approach to Newtonian mechanics which is frequently more powerful. Next the potential and kinetic energy are reviewed, and the conservation laws are examined from the point of view of the Lagrangian. The course continues with central foce motion, rigid body dynamics, and oscillations (for a single particle and a coupled system). The Hamiltonian mechanics brackets the other end of the course, paving a way towards the transition to quantum mechanics.

News

the first midterm took place Friday, Feb 27, in class (9-10 am in 361). Problems. Solutions.
the second midterm took place Monday, Apr 20, in class (9-10 am in 361). Problems. Solutions.

Books

The textbook for the course is

Taylor, Classical Mechanics. (Required.) Taylor's book has just the right balance of the amount of material and explanations that go along with it.
Morin, Classical Mechanics. (Recommended.) This is the book used at the equivalent course at Harvard. It's choke-full of problems, from very simple to fairly hard, and many of them have solutions. Since Physics can't be learned without solving many problems, this book could be of enormous help to those who need more practice than just homeworks.
Landau & Lifshitz, Mechanics. (Recommended.) A masterpiece of condensed scientific writing. While no homeworks will be assigned from it, it contains a bit more than you need to know, and nothing else. This is the one to get (even used) and keep coming back to in the future.

The following two books are also good and can be found in the library:

Goldstein, Classical Mechanics. (The ultimate Mechanics book, but more advanced than our needs. This is what is used for the graduate version of Mechanics.)

Barger & Olsson, Classical Mechanics. (A lovely alternative way of approaching the subject. Problem-driven and physics-oriented, but, unfortunately, with only a limited discussion of the Langrangian and Hamiltonian formalism.)

Syllabus and Homeworks

Notation for the reading: "T" means "Taylor", "LL" means "Landau & Lifshitz", the number is the chapter number. All problems are from Taylor (except when otherwise noted), so only the problem number (in the format (chapter.problem)) is given.

Week of	Lectures (Mon, Wed, Fri)	Reading	Homework (due the following week on Friday)
Jan. 26	Intro, Review of Work and Energy, Calculus of Variations (extra lecture on Thursday)	T-6	6.1, 6.2, 6.4, 6.6, 6.10, 6.14, 6.20
Feb. 2	Lagrangian Mechanics (Petar @ CERN on Wed and Fri -- extra conferences on those days)	T-7, LL-1	7.3, 7.5, 7.9, 7.13, 7.14 + Examples 7.5, 7.6 and 7.7 done with forces
Feb. 9	Lagrangian Mechanics	T-7 LL-2	7.16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27
Feb. 16	Conservation Laws, Lagrange multipliers	T-7, LL-2	7.29, 30, 32, 34, 45, 48, 50, 51, 52
Feb. 23	Gravity, Central force-fields First Midterm (covering Lagrangian Mechanics + basics of conservation laws) on Friday Feb 27, 9 am (in class)	T-8, LL-3	8.2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13
Mar. 2	Motion in a central force-field	T-8, LL-3	8.14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 29, 31
Mar. 9	Kepler orbits, System of particles (review), collisions, cross-sections	T-8, 14	8.32, 8.35 14.1, 7, 9, 13, 14 (Due Fri March 28)
Mar. 16	(Spring Break)
Mar. 23	Rutherford scattering, System of particles, Rotation about fixed axis, moments and products of inertia.	T-14, T-10	Class HW #1, 10.1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11
Mar. 30	Rigid body dynamics: angular momentum of an arbitrary rotation, intertia tensor.	T-10	10.19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 33 (double credit! Hint: check Landau)
Apr. 6	Newton's laws in rotating frame. Euler equations, spinning tops. Euler angles.	T-10 (T-9.4)	10.29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38 (double credit!)
Apr. 13	Oscillations: free, damped, forced, resonance.	T-5	5.4, 12, 18, 25, 27, 30
Apr. 20	Forced oscillations, resonance. Coupled oscillators and normal modes. Hamiltonian Mechanics (intro). (Section instead of lecture on Wed.)	T-5, T-11, T-13	5.41, 43 5.46, 47, 48 11.14, 19
Apr 27	Hamiltonian Mechanics (Lecture instead of section on Thur.)	T-13	13.4, 5, 11, 12, 14 Extra credit: 13.18. Practice final (counts as a whole homework) (due Wed May 6 in review session.)

Old exams

In order to get a sense for the level of the midterms and exams, here are some of the old ones:

Spring 2008, the first midterm. Solutions.
Spring 2008, the second midterm. Solutions. (Note: this exam used extended time, and most students took about 2 hrs to do it.)
Spring 2008, the final exam. Solutions.

Logistics

Grade-computation algorithm: There will be two midterms and one final exam. The final grade will be based 20% on the homework, 25% on the midterm with a higher score, 15% on the other midterm, and 40% on the final exam. (If a midterm is missed, a running homework average minus 30% is used instead.)

Lectures: Mon-Wed-Fri 9:00-9:50am, in Bloomberg 361.

Conference: Thu 1:30-2:20pm, in Bloomberg 168.

Office hours: being discussed.

Instructor:	Petar Maksimovic	TA:	Chris Eskew
Email:	petar@jhu.edu	Email:	cbe@pha.jhu.edu
Room:	Bloomberg 417	Room:	Bloomberg 421
Phone:	6-3819	Phone:	6-5106

URL: http://www.pha.jhu.edu/courses/171_204/