505 (Spring 2022)

PHYS 505:   Classical Mechanics  (Spring 2022)

T Th    9:30-10:50am      PAA A114

Instructor:   Silas Beane               B457     OH:  M 12:30pm-2:00pm (via ZOOM), T,Th 11:00am-12:00pm

TA:              Yiyun Dong               B157     OH:  F 12:30pm-1:30pm

TA:              Jesse Ashworth                      OH:  F  3:30pm-4:30pm (via ZOOM -- link via Canvas)   

Subject matter and texts

This is a one quarter course on classical mechanics.

A rough outline of the subject matter we will cover is:

• • Introduction and review of Newtonian mechanics

  • Lagrangian formulation of dynamics

  • Small oscillations and normal modes

  • Rigid body motion

  • Hamiltonian dynamics

  • Chaos -- phase space flows, attractors

  • Poincaré maps, bifurcation diagrams

  • Self similarity, Lyapunov exponents

The following books will be helpful accompaniment to the lectures:

• • H.S. Goldstein, C.P. Poole, and J.L. Safko, Classical Mechanics (3rd ed.), Addison-Wesley, 2002 (ISBN 0-201-65702-3).

  • (TYPOS: http://astro.physics.sc.edu/goldstein/)

  • L.D. Landau and E.M. Lifshitz, Mechanics (3rd ed.), Pergamon, 1976 (ISBN 0-08-021022-8).

  • A.L. Fetter and J.D. Walecka, Theoretical Mechanics of Particles and Continua, McGraw-Hill, 1980 (ISBN 0-07-020658-9). 

  • C. Lanczos, The Variational Principles of Mechanics, Dover Publications, 1986 (ISBN 0-486-65067-7).

  • G.L Baker and J.P. Gollub, Chaotic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, 1996 (ISBN 0-521-47685-2).

  • S.H. Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, CRC Press, 2000 (ISBN 0738204536).

  • MIT Open courseware: Iain Stewart notes on Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics.

I would recommend purchasing Fetter and Walecka (FW) as it's relatively cheap and well established.

Goldstein et al (G) is expensive and the third edition is severely infected with typos (see here).

Prerequisites

This is a core graduate course in physics. You must be a physics graduate student in order to take this course.

Communication

I strongly encourage students to communicate with me by email for administrative issues. I'll regularly communicate with the class by email. 

But, please, no physics questions via email! Unless they are of the yes-no variety they will likely go unanswered. If necessary you may attempt 

to visit me outside of office hours but please do not be offended if I'm unable to speak with you immediately. 

Reading assignments

There will be reading assignments posted on the calendar below. I will usually not remind you about this; it will be your responsibility

to keep track of the calendar and to do the readings ahead of lecture. Failure to do the readings may result in you being unable to follow what

we do in the class period.

Homework, exams and grades

The grades for this course will be based on homework (30%), a midterm exam (30%) and a final exam (40%). The final exam will be comprehensive. 

There will be weekly problem sets that must be submitted via CANVAS on Monday before 11:59pm. In grading there will be a strong emphasis on neatness and logic 

of  presentation. The  homeworks will be long and difficult. If you start working on an assignment the day before it’s due, you will not finish it in time. Late homework will not 

be accepted unless there is a compelling rationale. I believe that most of what you’ll get out of this class will be from the homework. I encourage you to work on the homework 

in groups. However, the work that you hand in must be your own, and you must list your collaborators on your manuscript as well as any references you have used (e.g. 

if you find a solution to a problem on the web, you must cite the url). I take this very seriously; a failure to acknowledge sources may result in a loss of all credit for the 

assignment, or worse. 

Religious Accommodations

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. 

The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy (https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/religious-accommodations-policy/). 

Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form (https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/).

Calendar