Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics: Online Book

Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics

The subject of this book is motion and the mathematical tools used to describe it.

Centuries of careful observations of the motions of the planets revealed regularities in those motions, allowing accurate predictions of phenomena such as eclipses and conjunctions. The effort to formulate these regularities and ultimately to understand them led to the development of mathematics and to the discovery that mathematics could be effectively used to describe aspects of the physical world. That mathematics can be used to describe natural phenomena is a remarkable fact.

A pin thrown by a juggler takes a rather predictable path and rotates in a rather predictable way. In fact, the skill of juggling depends crucially on this predictability. It is also a remarkable discovery that the same mathematical tools used to describe the motions of the planets can be used to describe the motion of the juggling pin.

Classical mechanics describes the motion of a system of particles, subject to forces describing their interactions. Complex physical objects, such as juggling pins, can be modeled as myriad particles with fixed spatial relationships maintained by stiff forces of interaction.