Syllabus

This first of two classical mechanics courses will build upon material introduced in Physics 1. This course will provide students with a skill-set to solve actual real-life problems involving dynamics and kinematics, breaking away from the highly idealised systems in first year courses while laying the foundations for analytical mechanics in the future. We will also see some content covered before, but now we will explicitly derive solutions that were simply provided previously. This will involve a much broader mathematical toolbox such as differential equations, multidimensional derivatives, matrix and tensor algebra, hyperbolic functions and complex numbers. These will come in use as we discuss planetary orbits, vibrations of molecules, the motion of tides, and how rockets escape into space!

Details

This class would to take place once a week over a semester. We followed the textbook Classical Mechanics by Taylor. The material was the subject of seminars held immediately after each lecture.

Class slides

PDFs of lecture slides can be found in the CM1 folder at this url. Note these slides were used in classes I taught 2021 and have not been updated since.

Part 1 [1 session]: Introduction and different coordinate systems

Part 2 [2 sessions]: Equations of motion and drag

Part 3 [2 sessions]: Motion of extended objects, Newton's laws with changing mass

Part 4 [2 sessions]: Energy, conservative forces and potentials

Part 5 [2 sessions]: Oscillations, damped and driven SHM

Part 6 [2 sessions]: Central forces, potential theory and orbital dynamics

Part 7 [2 sessions]: Motion in non-inertial frames of reference

Part 8 [2 sessions]: Motion of extended objects, inertia and rotations