Help with choosing interesting and useful books

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mute_button
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Books Interesting
AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers on finding recommended textbooks for a second-year university course in dynamics and vector calculus. Key suggestions include "An Elementary Treatise on Dynamics of a Particle and of Rigid Bodies" by S.L. Loney, noted for its mathematical rigor, and "Engineering Mechanics - Dynamics" by A. Pytel and J. Kiusalaas. For vector calculus, "Div, Grad, Curl and All That" by H.M. Schey is highlighted as a good introductory resource. Additionally, John Taylor's "Classical Mechanics" is strongly recommended for its comprehensive coverage of dynamics topics outlined in the syllabus. Participants emphasize the importance of consulting the course instructor for tailored recommendations, acknowledging the variability in personal preferences for textbooks.
Mute_button
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
I am about to start a second year university course called dynamics and vector calculus and there is not very much (or any information) on good books to help with the course and I was wondering if anybody out there knew of some helpful/interesting books in theses subjects?
The course syllabus is:
Dynamics
• Introduction to Dynamics, Ordinary Differential Equations, Newtonian dynamics, Reference frames. Projectiles.
• Momentum. Variable mass problems. Rocket equation.
• Simple harmonic motion. Harmonic oscillator. Damped SHM. Forced SHM.
• Conservation laws. Conservative forces. Conservation of energy and momentum.
• Central forces. Potential. Angular Momentum. Orbits.
• Inverse square forces. Gravity. Kepler’s laws.
• Coupled oscillators. Normal modes. Compound pendulums.

Vector Calculus
• Introduction to fields. Equipotentials. Scalar and vector fields.
• Gradient. Divergence. Curl. Laplacian operator. Vector operator identities.
• Line integrals, surface integrals, and volume integrals – in Cartesian and curvilinear coordinates.
• Divergence Theorem. Flux and the continuity equation. Gauss Law.
• Stokes’ Theorem, Scalar potential. Conservative forces and fields.
• Poisson’s equation. Vector potential.
• Curvilinear surfaces. Line, surface, volume elements, div, grad, curl in orthogonal curvilinear
coordinates.
Thank you
 
Physics news on Phys.org
"An elementary treatise on dynamics of a particle and of rigid bodies" by S.L.Loney is good but it is quite "mathematical", also I'm not sure if it is easily available in the market.
Also try "Engineering Mechanics - Dynamics" by A. Pytel and J. Kiusalaas.
For vector calculus " div,grad,curl and all that" by H.M.Schey is really good for beginners.
However since you'll get thousand answers from thousand people, the best way is to ask your course instructor.
 
The book is fascinating. If your education includes a typical math degree curriculum, with Lebesgue integration, functional analysis, etc, it teaches QFT with only a passing acquaintance of ordinary QM you would get at HS. However, I would read Lenny Susskind's book on QM first. Purchased a copy straight away, but it will not arrive until the end of December; however, Scribd has a PDF I am now studying. The first part introduces distribution theory (and other related concepts), which...
I've gone through the Standard turbulence textbooks such as Pope's Turbulent Flows and Wilcox' Turbulent modelling for CFD which mostly Covers RANS and the closure models. I want to jump more into DNS but most of the work i've been able to come across is too "practical" and not much explanation of the theory behind it. I wonder if there is a book that takes a theoretical approach to Turbulence starting from the full Navier Stokes Equations and developing from there, instead of jumping from...

Similar threads

Replies
10
Views
3K
Replies
16
Views
10K
Replies
3
Views
5K
Replies
1
Views
6K
Replies
9
Views
2K
Replies
4
Views
3K
Replies
10
Views
2K
Back
Top