Classical Mechanics Course Material and Videos

Every time I teach the undergraduate physics course on classical mechanics, I change things just a little bit. However, after this latest semester I think I have some material that works fairly well. What follows below are the topics I cover in the course along with any worksheets and videos I created for my students.

Feel free to use this for your own learning or your own course, it’s here for you (and for me when I forget what I did).

Course Details

This I an undergraduate physics course covering classical mechanics. The assigned text book is Classical Mechanics by John R. Taylor (University Science Books). I think it’s a fine book, but no textbook is perfect. As for the course goals, my only real main objective was to get through Lagrangian Mechanics. Yes, this is often a topic for the second semester of classical mechanics–but it’s possible that our students only take the first semester so I put that topic in the first semester.

Oh, python. You know I’m going to include using numerical calculations to solve problems. I like to use Web VPython because the students don’t have to install anything. Here is my syllabus.

OK, let’s get into it. I’m going to post links to my video lectures, worksheets, and tests.

Newtonian Mechanics and Coordinate Systems

This is mostly from chapter 1 in Taylor. The key ideas are to look at solving problems (and differential equations) using Newton’s second law and to write Newton’s second law in polar coordinates. I mean, I guess you could do spherical coordinates too–but that gets very messy.

Velocity Dependent Forces

This is from chapter 2 in Taylor. Really, it’s just more practice using Newton’s second law to solve some differential equations.

Work Energy Principle

Chapter 4 from the Taylor textbook. I skipped chapter 3 on momentum and angular momentum. Maybe that was a bad idea, but it just seems like it focused mainly on the rocket equation (which is actually just kind of silly). Oh, there’s also the center of mass and stuff–but we will get to that in the second semester of Classical Mechanics.

Non Inertial Reference Frames

Chapter 9 from Taylor. Yes, I know I took a large jump forward. I wanted to go over this now rather than in the second semester for a few reasons. First, this is a great place to reuse our ideas about acceleration in polar coordinates (for rotating reference frames). Second, fake forces are cool and students think about them anyway. Finally, I like talking about the tides. Students rarely understand the tides before this sections.

Lagrangian Mechanics

This is what we have been waiting for. OK, maybe it’s just me. This is from chapter 7 of Taylor. I skipped chapter 6 on the variational principle. Yes, you need that for Lagrangian mechanics but I’ve found that students don’t really get that part too well. If we just accept the Euler-Lagrange equation, we can move on – so that’s what I do.

Course Summary

Maybe I should have put this at the beginning.

That’s it.