Welcome to the course page for PHYS403 Classical Mechanics.  For convenience in setting up appointments and getting timely help if you need it, you can find my weekly schedule on the welcome page of this site.

We’ll be using Taylor’s Classical Mechanics text.  I’m sure you can find it cheaper than this, but this is probably about what you can expect from the bookstore, where a few copies will be available.

Classical Mechanics Course Documents

The schedule and syllabus are good to go and the project will take shape as the semester begins and I figure out the capabilities of the class.

syllabus (version 2018.07.01)

schedule (version 2018.07.01 in progress)

The project prompt below is “soft-finished.”  That is, I won’t add any more work to it and you have all the physics necessary to do all of it.  The only things I may add from this point (end of October) on are hints and/or specific grading criteria.  These things will likely be heavily influenced by what you turn in by the Thanksgiving deadline for the draft solution.

project prompt (.pdf version 2018.10.23)
project prompt (.nb version 2018.10.23)

Classical Mechanics Tidbits

Here’s a link to the Mathematica page on this site.  Get through the tutorials as soon as possible if you aren’t already familiar with the software from thermo or QM.

Classical Mechanics Exams and Due Dates

I: 2018.10.02
II: 2018.11.01
III: 2018.12.06

Classical Mechanics Homework

Please start each problem on a new sheet of paper.  Starred problems (my stars here, not his in the text) have been selected to be written up in Mathematica as annotated solutions (see bottom of this page).  You can access 20/40 possible points for such problems by solving whatever task is requested on paper, but for full credit, the homework must include a printout or .nb file emailed to me.  I have no preference, but if things don’t go as planned it’s easier for me to troubleshoot as an electronic file.

I’ll post my solution to a given assignment in order to try to model the types of solutions I’d like to see (at a minimum, what I want to see from starred problems) even if you don’t typeset your homework.  I’ll post my solutions ten days after the due date or when I have all your submissions, whichever comes first.

HW01: due 2018.09.11
Chapter 01: 2, 5, 10 , 29, 35, 37, 50*

HW02: due 2018.09.20
Chapter 02: 1, 5, 8, 13, 20*, 29, 45

HW03: due 2018.09.27
Chapter 03: 4, 10, 13, 22, 25, 35*

HW04: due 2018.10.16
Chapter 04: 2, 16, 21, 24, 29*, 33*, 37*

HW05: due 2018.10.30
Chapter 05: 2, 13, 18, 31*, 33, 36*, 39*, 50*

HW06: due 2018.11.01
Chapter 06: 1, 3, 16

HW07: due 2018.11.20
Chapter 07: 2, 8, 10, 17, 29*, 44*

HW08: due TBD
Chapter 15: 5, 7, 13, 17, 21, 30
in progress

Mathematica Computational Essays

I began having students write up some of the particularly suited exercises in Mathematica some time ago for three reasons:
1) frequently a computer is necessary to create plots in a reasonable time anyway and Excel is not very good at the task,
2) the MS Office suite is no longer good enough for most employers when they ask if you have “computer skills,” and
3) there is a richer learning that takes place when one spends time trying to tell a story instead of simply doing a calculation, especially if the audience is no more experienced at a subject than the author.

For many examples of introductory problems I’ve written up this way, see any intro course page on this site or the various tutorials I’ve written to help you get going (or contact me directly).  Here is an interesting blog post from the guy behind Mathematica.  I started doing this before he wrote the piece there, but he pretty well relates what it is I’m trying to have you accomplish for yourselves.