Customer Reviews

Analytical Mechanics

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a fabulous book! It is written at a very advanced level, however, which is why some of the others reviewing this book failed to see its strengths. If you are taking a second course in mechanics, and you are past the stage where you need to have your hand held throughout an entire course, then this book is ideal.

This book is excellent to fill the gap between basic physics (such as: Halliday-Resnick, etc.) and advanced classical mechanics (such as: Goldstein or Arnold).

The discussion is clear and expressed in plain English. The problems are both challanging and informative.

In my opinion, this text is better than Symon's "MECHANICS"
and should be in your shelf right next to Goldstein's.

This text can also be used to accompany Marion-Thornton's "CLASSICAL DYNAMICS".

As the authors point out in their preface, this book was developed as part of a classroom course - one where students would have ongoing email discussions with one another and with a teaching assistant throughout the course. As a result, many important ideas are presented in the form of "email questions", which the book leaves unanswered. Students are supposed to think about them on their own, then verify their answers by emailing the TA. Similarly, none of the chapter exercises have any answers, nor is there a student answer guide available.

While this is an interesting pedagogical approach, it severely limits the value of this book as a general physics text. In fact, outside the exact instructor-based class format used by the authors, the book is relatively useless.

As alternatives, I'd recommend Fowles & Cassiday (at the easy end of the spectrum), or for the more ambitious, just jump into Goldstein. Either of those volumes, plus a good problem book, will teach you far more physics than Hand & Free.

This book lacks good examples, and continuosly alters the time scale to "simplify" equations, which merely makes the form confusing. Classical Mechanics by Goldstein is far superior. Although the problems in Goldstein are much more difficult, the content is more thorough and straightforward. Hand and Finch do an extremely poor job with the Laplace Rung Lenz Vector, and their work on Hamiltonian dynamics is incomplete and largely unmotivated. The only benefit of this book over Goldstein is the introduction of Green's Functions, which Goldstein does not cover.

All in all, if you want an undergraduate Analytic Mechanics text, buy Goldstein. Its more advanced, but more comprehensible.

This is a very good book for learning analytical mechanics.
As a student, I recieve the Mechanics by Florian Scheck, and I want to tell you that I couldn't understand a word. Mechanics by Florian Scheck is probably a good book but for me, it's not readable. So, I took Analytical Mechanics by Louis N. Hand and Janet Finch, a readable book, that actually tries to explain things in simple, clear words. It's also better than Landau's.
I've also enjoyed read from it other chapters that wasn't in my course's scope, something I never thought I'll do... Recommended!

Terrible book, that's all I can say. I own both Goldstein's classical mechanics and this book. If you compare the logic, both books are quite similar. HOWEVER, just read both books, you will see that Hand and Finch are probably just trying to become famous by publishing this piece of junk. In the foreward, it is even mentioned that this book is developed from a set of lecture notes used in Cornell....YES IT'S JUST a collection of lecture notes ONLY. You will need a good teacher to explain things to you before you attempt this book at all. Now look at Goldstein, it IS a textbook. You can just learn classical mechanics from reading Goldstein even if you have a terrible teacher. Furthermore, Hand and Finch don't give examples at all, and there is NO ANSWERS to the short-quiz questions found in the chapters, which dont make sense at all! The reason I am giving it 2 stars instead of 1 is that the problems in the end of the textbook are challenging and good, and not many typos are found throughout the book. In conclusion, don't waste your money on this, and if your instructor is using this book... God bless you!

Other books I recommend: Marion/Thorton does quite a good job, but it is probably too elementary, considering the fact that Lagrangian formulation is introduced only towards the end of the book, which doesnt reflect the importance of this subject in theoretical physics. However you will find many good examples in Thorton's book. IT IS A GREAT BUY.

ONCE MORE, DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY IN HAND/FINCH!!

Good material may be found in Goldstein,Taylor,Corinaldesi.Try
those ones.

Quite possibly the worst physics text ever. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MECHANICS. It seems too advanced for the average undergrad who has just completed a lower division physics series and not advanced enough for advanced undergrads and grads. "Classical Dyamics of Particles and Systems" by Marion and Thorton is probably more suitable for the average undergrad and "Classical Mechanics" by Goldstein is a much better advanced text. Hand and Finch does not have enough examples and some problems actually have no solution!

I just spent the past semester taking the course using this book at Purdue University. It was a horrible experience, the explanations in the book are poorly written and poorly constructed. There are no examples in the book, which instead chooses to lecture endlessly on about mathematics in a way that is entirely aphysical, reducing learning from this book to often be the same as taking engineering -- endlessly memorizing equations and how to apply them. I got a B in the class in the end, but only because I used Marion & Thornton's book in parallel.

The entire semester, the professor said "I know, this book sucks. Sorry guys." So its not just me. Any professors looking at assigning this book, steer way clear. And a tip for the future: Any book that prints only in paperback can't be that good.

Unfortunately, authors never realize that one of the most important things in a textbook is to provide answers to the questions. Not solutions, just answers. Hand and Finch give very little examples and there are no answers to the problems in the book. Also, this book is written as if you already know the subject. It is unclear, awkward and incomprehensible. I found a much better Mechanics book in Landau and Lifshitz. Don't buy this book!