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Free Math Books

klkuttler.com

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Re: Free Math Books

#2
Wow, these look great! Does anyone know of any similar resources for mechanics, specifically the Hamiltonian & Lagrangian formulations? I've had a bit of trouble finding good resources online to supplement my mechanics modules at uni.

Re: Free Math Books

#3

Wow, these look great! Does anyone know of any similar resources for mechanics, specifically the Hamiltonian & Lagrangian formulations? I've had a bit of trouble finding good resources online to supplement my mechanics modules at uni.

Based on "uni" I'm guessing you are at a UK institution (as am I).

The notes are utter dogshit because there's no culture of publishing them online for the public.

Kibble's classical mechanics book is deep, easy to read and cheap, I'd start there. Most physics books past a certain level end up with an increasingly hand-wavy derivation of the Euler-lagrange equations in some context

Re: Free Math Books

#4

Wow, these look great! Does anyone know of any similar resources for mechanics, specifically the Hamiltonian & Lagrangian formulations? I've had a bit of trouble finding good resources online to supplement my mechanics modules at uni.

Look for Dover books, particularly from Russian authors. Cheap and good!

Re: Free Math Books

#5

Wow, these look great! Does anyone know of any similar resources for mechanics, specifically the Hamiltonian & Lagrangian formulations? I've had a bit of trouble finding good resources online to supplement my mechanics modules at uni.

I found these lecture notes by David Tong to be really good at a glance [1]. A free introductory physics book [2]. I don't have much physics stuff and I know almost nothing about it, I mostly focus on Math/CS, this is some stuff that I had bookmarked. Maybe someone else here can share some good Mechanics resources.

[1] http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/dynamics.html [2] http://www.lightandmatter.com

Re: Free Math Books

#6

Wow, these look great! Does anyone know of any similar resources for mechanics, specifically the Hamiltonian & Lagrangian formulations? I've had a bit of trouble finding good resources online to supplement my mechanics modules at uni.

Tong is good, most appropriate if you already know a little about the subject. However, it is a "fast-track" kind of resource, it is good to read some standard textbooks on the subject, i.e. Landau & Lifshitz (the most efficient book on theoretical mechanics ever) and Goldstein (broad and interesting).

Re: Free Math Books

#7

Wow, these look great! Does anyone know of any similar resources for mechanics, specifically the Hamiltonian & Lagrangian formulations? I've had a bit of trouble finding good resources online to supplement my mechanics modules at uni.

Tong is good, most appropriate if you already know a little about the subject. However, it is a "fast-track" kind of resource, it is good to read some standard textbooks on the subject, i.e. Landau & Lifshitz (the most efficient book on theoretical mechanics ever) and Goldstein (broad and interesting).

Although I have immense respect for them I really don't like L&L all that much. The first one is pretty beautiful but it could use some material on the "deeper" side of things, particularly the connection with geometry and Noether's theorem. As for the others, they're just too "russian" - I like how oddly practical they are, but they're just not structured properly - StatPhys in particular just doesn't flow very well.

The typesetting is also a crime against humanity - they should be done similarly to the Feynman lectures, so typed up in LaTeX rather than whatever they are now

Re: Free Math Books

#8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tong is good, most appropriate if you already know a little about the subject. However, it is a "fast-track" kind of resource, it is good to read some standard textbooks on the subject, i.e. Landau & Lifshitz (the most efficient book on theoretical mechanics ever) and Goldstein (broad and interesting).

Although I have immense respect for them I really don't like L&L all that much. The first one is pretty beautiful but it could use some material on the "deeper" side of things, particularly the connection with geometry and Noether's theorem. As for the others, they're just too "russian" - I like how oddly practical they are, but they're just not structured properly - StatPhys in particular just doesn't flow very well…

Regarding geometry and Noether's theorem, I disagree. That stuff is way overblown in general, it gives you very little ( in classical mechanics) for the time and page count the subject requires. I had a lecture on this topic from enthusiast well-respected physicist, and I kept thinking, this stuff is interesting math but completely useless to a physicist.
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