Product Description

Gregory's Classical Mechanics is a major new textbook for undergraduates in mathematics and physics. It is a thorough, self-contained and highly readable account of a subject many students find difficult. The author's clear and systematic style promotes a good understanding of the subject: each concept is motivated and illustrated by worked examples, while problem sets provide plenty of practice for understanding and technique. Computer assisted problems, some suitable for projects, are also included. The book is structured to make learning the subject easy; there is a natural progression from core topics to more advanced ones and hard topics are treated with particular care. A theme of the book is the importance of conservation principles. These appear first in vectorial mechanics where they are proved and applied to problem solving. They reappear in analytical mechanics, where they are shown to be related to symmetries of the Lagrangian, culminating in Noether's theorem.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #141147 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 596 pages

Review
'The writing here is a picture of clarity and directness … The exercises include plenty of interesting and challenging problems … an attractive and well-written exposition of classical mechanics. I wish it had been my textbook when I was a student.' Mathematical Association of America

About the Author
Douglas Gregory is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Manchester. He is a researcher of international standing in the field of elasticity, and has held visiting positions at New York University, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Washington. He is highly regarded as a teacher of applied mathematics: this, his first book, is the product of many years ‘ teaching experience.

Customer Reviews

An excellent book
I bought this book as a chemist wanting to look a little deeper into the mathematical reasoning between many mathematical-based chemical concepts/theories. The book is a must for all those that deal with the far reaching concepts described by classical mechanics, particularly those of course on mathematics and physics degee schemes.

Well written book with coherently explained concepts and problems with answers.

Straight to what matters
This is a book on classical mechanics that goes direct to the point. It;s highly understandable and clear, however, if you have never studied mechanics and you learn well from this book only, I would be surprised! However, if you have solved exercises in mehcanics and physics in general and have read some mechanics, calculus and differential equations then reading this book is a pleasure since it's strict and defines what has to be defined. With that I mean that some books just explain you what things are in terms of the physical interpretation and then write a formula. But sometimes you dont really understand why or for what purpose a definition is needed. But this book tells you directly what you are looking for in every chapter or field of mechanics and then strictly defines the concepts to finally write the formula, or derive it, thus there is no ambiguity. Also, you know why the definitions or theorems have to (is useful to) be defined in that way. This is extremely important in mehanics since you really need to know what a point mass, a frame of reference and so on is if you want to think about how to solve problems and also about the significance of the result.

Also, and perhaps surprisingly for such a strict book in terms of theory (even if not very advanced mathematics are used), most of the exercises relevant to exams and real life basic problems are clearly solved and explained by the author. In sum, not for the beginner that struggles with elementary calculus, but still understandable enough for someone that has understood something at the level of "Thomas Calculus" which is an undergraduate book in applied maths or mathematical methods.

Anotehr thing to think about is that this book is up to date. It gives clear and precise introductions to some hot topics like theory of small oscillations, non-linear oscillations and phase space, and, importantly, starting from teh very basics guides you to the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism and Noether's theorem. What else can you expect from an undergraduate level book! Magnificent. Finally, like with anything else, I wouldn't learn from this book only and I would try to read others also like, for example, "Vector mechanics for engineers" or any other that you might find useful. The one I mention lacks up to date information and maybe notation but has plenty of other good things also.


Well done to the author and the department of applied maths in Manchester.

Classical Mechanics, R. Gregory
V.useful undergraduate text. Has examples of just about every type of standard ugrad classical mechanics problem. A few bizarre typos do nothing to spoil the general quality of the book. You'll be unlucky if your course material isnt here.