![]() ![]() So I thought that it might just serve my purposes in finding someone to explain physics to, as well as their purposes, and it might also be fun to teach a course on modern physics. This program offers courses for people in the local nonacademic community. That’s when I first found out about Stanford’s Continuing Studies program. ![]() There ought to be a way for people to develop their interest by interacting with active scientists, but there didn’t seem to be one. As a rule, Stanford and other universities don’t allow outsiders into classes, and, for most of these grownups, going back to school as a full-time student is not a realistic option. Unfortunately there was not much opportunity for such folks to take courses. Now, after a career or two, they wanted to get back into it, at least at a casual level. They had had all kinds of careers but never forgot their one-time infatuation with the laws of the universe. As it happens, the Stanford area has a lot of people who once wanted to study physics, but life got in the way. Figuring out the best way to explain something is almost always the best way to understand it yourself.Ībout ten years ago someone asked me if I would teach a course for the public. Even when I’m at my desk doing research, there’s a dialog going on in my head. For me it’s much more than teaching: It’s a way of thinking. Thus, if you have trouble the first time seeing this, don't fret, others had trouble too the first time.I’ve always enjoyed explaining physics. On seeing it for the first time, it is a bit of a jump from ordinary calculus but after a couple of reads and scratching out the math on paper, I think it takes hold. Its Amazon URL is: Īnd, at the Amazon site you can delve into the table of contents and I believe a portion of the first chapter.įrom my own experience and that of others who have delved into this topic for the first time, especially early in the education process, is in understanding the Calculus of Variations used to derive the Euler-Lagrange equations. This book is "A Student's Guide to Lagrangians and Hamiltonians" by Patrick Hamill. It is presented at a level that anyone with Calculus (multi-variable at least to the degree of partial derivatives) can read and understand. However, there is a more complete book with more examples and even problems to solve that is specific to Lagrangians and Hamiltonians. I agree with other answers in that Susskind's book that parallels the lectures, "The Theoretical Minimum" is a good read. (Having said which, I'm not very familiar with Susskind's book.) These serve a dual purpose: they let you test your newly-gained skills to see how it works out in practice and, in doing so, they let you see how and why the new formulations are better or cleaner (or not). On the physics side, it will be helpful to have a small but well-refined workhorse set of physical systems on whose Newtonian mechanics you've worked with thoroughly - think harmonic oscillator, pendulums in 2D and 3D, Keplerian motion, and so on. The only really new tool you will need is the calculus of variations this is usually developed enough in analytical mechanics textbooks that you'll learn enough of it from there to keep you going, but it wouldn't hurt to have a read on it beforehand or parallel to the mechanics. On the mathematical side, you will likely need to fluent enough with the calculus of several real variables as well as comfortable with the associated geometrical manipulations. As such, you have two main types of prerequisites: ![]() Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics are about taking a good look at the foundations of classical mechanics, and reformulating them in ways which are cleaner and provide nice insights, but which are still strictly equivalent to Newtonian mechanics. ![]()
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