A New Look at Classical Mechanics
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A New Look at Classical Mechanics∗ Dipanjan Chakraborty
Foundations of Classical Mechanics Author: P C Deshmukh Published by: Cambridge University Press Price: | 799/Classical Mechanics is one of the fundamental pillars of Physics, which every student of Science must master to begin his or her journey. It describes our natural world to a very large extent. Despite the fact that every curriculum in Physics is designed with Classical Mechanics as its first basic course, there remains a severe lack of suitable textbooks for such an important subject. Having taught the subject twice
in the undergraduate curriculum of IISER Mohali, this author’s experience/interactions have strongly reinforced this opinion. In the last ten years, the higher education system in India has gone through a silent revolution. With the establishment of the IISERs, there is a profound change in the methodology of science education although this remains somewhat exclusive. In the University curriculum, the usual text books on the subject are scant in the sense that they do not provoke any further scientific curiosity in the reader’s mind. Rather they treat the topic as an exercise in solving differential equations. Perhaps this remains a limitation of the authors. In contrast, the modern curriculum encourages a more critical thinking and Foundations of Classical Mechanics seems to do just that. The first eight chapters of the book deal with the dynamics of particles. The ninth chapter introduces a very important topic to the readers – chaos in dynamical systems. Beyond these, the chapters 10–12 introduce the classical treatment of fields with specific examples of fluid mechanics and electrodynamics. Finally, chapters 13–14 provide a detailed discussion on special and general theory of relativity. Despite the fact that the book covers such a wide range of topics in classical physics, the chapters are well written and there is a unique balance between a qualitative and a quantitative description of the topics. The first chapter starts with the Newton’s laws
∗ Vol.25, No.9 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-020-1046-3
RESONANCE | September 2020
1287
BOOK REVIEW
sical mechanics. But the author goes beyond this and introduces the concept of symmetry and its connection with the underlying conservation principles. The connection is repeatedly emphasized throughout the book. The second chapter of the book introduces the essential mathematical preliminaries that are basic requisites in dealing with the different topics. It is worth noting that the author assumes that the readers have been exposed to some basic mathematical concepts such as calculus, matrix algebra and vectors. Nevertheless, the introductory section of this chapter revisits these concepts and also introduces the readers to the idea of a directional derivative (the beginning of multivariate calculus). Coordinate transformations such as rotation and reflection are also illustrated in this chapter with suitable figures and schematics, after which a rigorous mathematical description is presente
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