Pengarang
: David Morin
Penerbit :
Preface
This
textbook has grown out of the first-semester honors freshman physics course that
has been taught at Harvard University during recent years. The book is
essentially two books in one. Roughly half of it follows the form of a normal
textbook, consisting of text, along with exercises suitable for homework
assignments.
The other half takes the form of a problem book, with all sorts of
problems (with solutions) of varying degrees of difficulty. If you’ve been
searching for a supply of practice problems to work on, this should keep you
busy for a while. A brief outline of the book is as follows. Chapter 1 covers
statics. Most of this will probably look familiar, but you’ll find some fun
problems. In Chapter 2, we learn about forces and how to apply F = ma. There’s
a bit of math here needed for solving some simple differential equations.
Chapter 3 deals with oscillations and coupled oscillators. Again, there’s a
fair amount of math needed for solving linear differential equations, but
there’s no way to avoid it. Chapter 4 deals with conservation of energy and
momentum. You’ve probably seen much of this before, but again, it has lots of
neat problems.
In
Chapter 5, we introduce the Lagrangian method, which will undoubtedly be new to
you. It looks rather formidable at first, but it’s really not all that rough. There
are difficult concepts at the heart of the subject, but the nice thing is that the
technique is easy to apply. The situation here analogous to taking a derivative
in calculus; there are substantive concepts on which the theory rests, but the
act of taking a derivative is fairly straightforward.
……….
One
last note: the problems with included solutions are called “Problems.” The problems
without included solutions are called “Exercises.” There is no fundamental difference
between the two, except for the existence of written-up solutions. I hope you
enjoy the book!
— David Morin
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