As said in the title, I’m interested in learning Classical Physics. Not the high school / introductory college course version of classical physics, but the real deal. I’ve found bits and pieces of the Lagrangian / Hamiltonian formalisms, and thought they were quite elegant. Some lazy reading on Wikipedia / lectures on youtube have been useful for investigating several other concepts, like Chaos theory, Special / General Relativity, etc.
So I know that the essence of Classical Physics may be encapsulated by these accessible resources, but I’d still prefer to engage a single coherent text for the more intense math. Anyone know where I can obtain such a resource? I’ve tried my local book stores / libraries, and all they seem to have is high school level textbooks and pop science (admittedly, the texts on Quantum Mechanics are pretty solid).
Wolfram can be a good source of physics info (Eric Weisstein’s World of Physics.) However, the topics are offered scattershot. For something more integrated and coherent, if I were you I’d get an old (and thus cheap) edition of a classical mechanics text, something like:
The lowest price is $7 for a used copy at the moment.
Alternatively, you could find someone who took a classical mechanics course in college (physics/engineering major) and see if they have an old textbook you could borrow.
I’m not familiar with Symon so I won’t comment, but Goldstein is probably more advanced than MattProle would want to start out with. My preferred textbook for introductory upper-level Classical is actually Taylor’s Classical Mechanics, but as that’s a fairly new book, cheap used copies aren’t available yet.
Indeed, so I said. If he wants a mathematically-grounded text, my recommendation is Kleppner and Kolenkow.
(Kleppner was actually my professor for my Advanced Mechanics course In which we used Goldstein. Later on I got to work with him, sorta, on the RELATE Wiki)
I found Kleppner and Kolenkow’s An Introduction to Mechanics on ebay “like new” for $35.
Thanks for pointer.
I would like to find a sophomore or junior level text in Electricity and Magnetism. That was the next series I took after Mechanics. Any recommendations?