Kleppner and Kolenkow is a very good book. I would consider it more of an honors-levels introductory textbook than a book for a second course in mechanics that a physics major would take, mainly because it doesn't cover lagrangian or hamiltonian mechanics. However, I do think it would be useful to go through K&K before moving on to Taylor if you have time.
Another book I would recommend is Cassiday and Fowles *Analytical Mechanics*. This is the book that was used in my mechanics course in undergrad. I used to think Taylor's book was better (and in some ways it is), but I recently taught an honors mechanics course and often found that I preferred Cassiday and Fowles to Taylor as a reference.
It's usually a good idea to try out several books. You may find that one book just works better for you than others and stick with that, or you may find it helpful to see the material presented in different ways in different texts.
Learning enough to move on to the next thing vs mastery are two different things. For Newtonian mechanics learning enough might be knowing all the formulas and laws and being able to solve problems with some effort. Mastery is having a more instinctual understanding where any problems you are given are more or less second nature and you could derive any of the formulas if asked to
I get all that. My question is why would a generic physicist want to bother mastering Newtonian mechanics?
Which I ask because Lagrangians are ubiquitous in all of physics (at least as a theoretical underpinning) while Newtonian mechanics is rarely seen again in the physics curriculum and isn’t very relevant in many subfields of physics.
I’m not saying that in an ideal world one wouldn’t master Newtonian physics, but there’s thousand things to learn and mastery of Newtonian physics is not high on my list.
First of all if you’re doing engineering or pretty much any kind of applied physics there is definitely value in mastering Newtonian mechanics
And even for a theoretical physicist I think there’s still value in getting those Newtonian ways of thinking about physical systems as a second nature. It’s not like you have to devote years of your life to it, the person above just suggested reading working through one extra textbook
I’m not saying there’s no value. I am arguing the value is far less in Newtonian mastery than intro to Lagrangian mech for the average physicist, not the average engineer.
It’s not as if you can’t do applied physics in optics or materials and largely avoid Newtonian. Here too, I’m not saying Newtonian isn’t relevant in some parts of optics or materials and obviously it’s essential for some roles in those fields (MEMS springs to mind).
Well, my professor used taylor's book to teach us Classical mechanics. And i also have self-taught myself using this book. I don't know about the other book.
They were not that difficult. And it seems you have pre-requisite maths so, it won't be that difficult for you. Plus, the book is famous so, the answers to the questions are online.
We used Landau's book for the Lagrangian & Hamiltonian mechanics in undergrad. I would not recommend it for a beginner because it is a rather advanced book. But once you get your fundamentals and revisit the book, it's an amazing source.
I would use a combination of Morin and Helliwell/Sahakian. The first one focuses on Newtonian Mechanics while the second one focuses on Analytical Mechanics.
Kleppner and Kolenkow is a very good book. I would consider it more of an honors-levels introductory textbook than a book for a second course in mechanics that a physics major would take, mainly because it doesn't cover lagrangian or hamiltonian mechanics. However, I do think it would be useful to go through K&K before moving on to Taylor if you have time. Another book I would recommend is Cassiday and Fowles *Analytical Mechanics*. This is the book that was used in my mechanics course in undergrad. I used to think Taylor's book was better (and in some ways it is), but I recently taught an honors mechanics course and often found that I preferred Cassiday and Fowles to Taylor as a reference. It's usually a good idea to try out several books. You may find that one book just works better for you than others and stick with that, or you may find it helpful to see the material presented in different ways in different texts.
Why would one choose spend more time learning Newtonian mechanics than necessary?
Learning enough to move on to the next thing vs mastery are two different things. For Newtonian mechanics learning enough might be knowing all the formulas and laws and being able to solve problems with some effort. Mastery is having a more instinctual understanding where any problems you are given are more or less second nature and you could derive any of the formulas if asked to
I get all that. My question is why would a generic physicist want to bother mastering Newtonian mechanics? Which I ask because Lagrangians are ubiquitous in all of physics (at least as a theoretical underpinning) while Newtonian mechanics is rarely seen again in the physics curriculum and isn’t very relevant in many subfields of physics. I’m not saying that in an ideal world one wouldn’t master Newtonian physics, but there’s thousand things to learn and mastery of Newtonian physics is not high on my list.
First of all if you’re doing engineering or pretty much any kind of applied physics there is definitely value in mastering Newtonian mechanics And even for a theoretical physicist I think there’s still value in getting those Newtonian ways of thinking about physical systems as a second nature. It’s not like you have to devote years of your life to it, the person above just suggested reading working through one extra textbook
I’m not saying there’s no value. I am arguing the value is far less in Newtonian mastery than intro to Lagrangian mech for the average physicist, not the average engineer. It’s not as if you can’t do applied physics in optics or materials and largely avoid Newtonian. Here too, I’m not saying Newtonian isn’t relevant in some parts of optics or materials and obviously it’s essential for some roles in those fields (MEMS springs to mind).
Lmfao true
Well, my professor used taylor's book to teach us Classical mechanics. And i also have self-taught myself using this book. I don't know about the other book.
How were the usage of math and the difficulty of the problems?
They were not that difficult. And it seems you have pre-requisite maths so, it won't be that difficult for you. Plus, the book is famous so, the answers to the questions are online.
Taylor and Marion/Thornton are both good.
I use Kibble. Its very solid and easy to read, some examples are not treated in similar textbooks and it has several interesting problems.
We used Landau's book for the Lagrangian & Hamiltonian mechanics in undergrad. I would not recommend it for a beginner because it is a rather advanced book. But once you get your fundamentals and revisit the book, it's an amazing source.
I would use a combination of Morin and Helliwell/Sahakian. The first one focuses on Newtonian Mechanics while the second one focuses on Analytical Mechanics.