Classical Improving my problem solving skills....

[MadAtom]

Hi everybody!

I've just finished my 4th year of physics degree (1st year of the masters degree, to be more exact) and I feel that I've spent most of my time reading theory and studying proofs and very few time on actual problem solving. In order to change that, I decided this summer go through all of David Morin Classical Mechanics textbook problems.

The problems are fine and I am having a lot of fun working on them, but I wonder if I shouldn't instead improve my problem solving on more "modern" topics such as quantum mechanics and general relativity. Let me remind you that I've already had classical mechanics courses (2 actually), and I am only looking to get more comfortable with problems. Are the skills that I am going get from classical mechanics problems really... useful, transferable in some way? I am almost convinced that the answer is yes (I have a very romantic opinion about CM) but I'd like to ear what you think. Thanks in advance.

MA

 

[jedishrfu]

Of course, many classical mathematics techniques have migrated into QM and GR. That’s why they taught the Lagrangian and then the Hamiltonian techniques as a precursor to learning QM.