Classical Mechanics

by H.C. Corben, Philip Stehle

Geared toward advanced undergraduates and graduate students, this text covers applications not usually taught in physics courses: the theory of space-charge limited currents, atmospheric drag, the motion of meteoritic dust, variational principles in rocket motion, transfer functions, dissipative systems, and much more. 41 illustrations. 1960 edition.

Genres: Physics

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[William Schram · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a very long time, I have been buying and reading books that are far beyond my skill level. This includes books on Statistical Mechanics and other such advanced subjects. So, for a while now I have been attempting to fill in the gaps of my knowledge with a firm basis on which to build. Surprisingly, I seem to have found a little bit of that in the second edition of Classical Mechanics written by Herbert Charles Corben and Philip Stehle.

Classical Mechanics was written back in 1950 and the second edition came out in 1960, making this text antique. To its credit though, this book doesn’t pull any punches. The authors do their utmost to explain the equations and phenomena. The authors expect the reader to be at a level where they no longer need to plug in numbers for the problems they solve. It does a bit of foundation building at the start with describing vectors and telling you what some of the more cryptic signs are. For example, please excuse my ignorance, but I don’t know what you call that upside-down triangle. I know it is an operator of some kind since the book told me so, but I still call it the upside-down triangle. This is a bit of a disadvantage to me since it probably has a shorter name. Edit: it is called nabla.

So the book introduces stuff early on and expects you to remember. It discusses Newtonian Mechanics, goes into the Lagrangian, and the Hamiltonian. It clearly explains why we have these ideas. For example, with the introduction of the Lagrangian, it states that we want to have equations that apply to all coordinate systems. There’s more to it than that, but that is the gist that I recall the best. By the same token, I am glad that the internet exists, since I can look up stuff on various sites and can aid me in my pursuit of knowledge.

So I liked this book. It wouldn’t work as a stand-alone text for me since I need some background and foundation to understand it more completely, but this one was well done for what it did explain.

[Steve Schlutow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book inspired me to get my masters in physics.. It was a cheap physics book purchased at a small bookstore.. I sat down one summer, read it, understood much of it, and decided to follow through with my masters in the subject.. Therefore 5 stars..