Customer Reviews

Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Pros:
The Hamiltonian and Lagrangian sections were well-explained.
Good intro to mathematical formalism/style used in higher level courses. Notation a little clunky though. No use whining about the Math; just get used to it if you want your degree and graduate school.
Problems were interesting & challenging, but will kill newbies... more on that below.

Cons:
The other sections were so-so. Very often I could not see the forest for the trees. Initiates need some kind of context/background to fit the various topics together and with what they already know.
It's not readily obvious that intuition is just as important as analysis in Dynamics problem-solving--no advice given in this respect. Caused me to use up too much time trying to crack a problem when my approach was unsuitable in the first place.
Examples did not help in solving the problems; often felt like I was thrown into the deep end of the pool before I could swim.
Try Schaum's Outlines, Landau, Goldstein as well. Feynmann's Lectures give some background.

Why is everyone complaining about the mathematical formalism in this text? While perhaps such formalism requires a certain level of mathematical maturity on the part of the reader, it does *not* detract from pedagogy. In my opinion, it is better to become used to such formalism in the context of classical dynamics, where intuition can be of great help, than later on, and please, calculus and linear algebra is all that's required! It's not *that* formal!

I'd also like to say that the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian sections present one of the more lucid explanations that I have seen.

Finally, no, the author does not give you an example problem and then ask you to do the same problem with different numbers at the end of the chapter--he assumes you could do that. If you can't read a book that doesn't have such trivial problems for you to work, perhaps you should go elsewhere. The problems in this book are often challenging, and require you to extrapolate from the previous chapters. I find such problems more interesting than ones that require you to only look back in the chapter, grab two equations, eliminate one variable, and then plug in numbers. I'm not sure why everyone has jumped on the "the problems aren't worded well" bandwagon either, as I have encountered very little ambiguity throughout this book. If you want to master classical dynamics, this isn't the only book you'll want to work through, but it certainly should be on your list.

I'm taking physics 105 at UC Berkeley and we're using Marion and Thornton in my class. I like using the book as a reference, but I think that each chapter does a poor job of explaining how to solve the problems that appear in the end of each chapter. There are also very few simple problems in the book that allow one to become used to using new methods (like hamiltonian mechanics, and the use of lagrangians) before using them to solve difficult problems. I would reccommend another mechanics book such as "Mechanics" by Landau and Lifschitz or "Mechanics" by Symon. Unless you have an excellent instructor, Marion and Thronton is not very much fun to use.

(Disclaimer: All my criticisms are directed against Stephen Thornton, who prepared this edition when Marion died. I haven't seriously examined the earlier editions.)

Let it not be said that this book is utterly without virtue. It does have a good store of challenging, interesting problems. Also, the introductory chapter includes a unique (for this level) discussion of the Levi-Civita notation, which is great for managing complicated expressions in vector and tensor analysis (if you're currently taking junior or senior E&M, use this if your teacher asks you to verify all those crazy vector identities on the inside cover of your book!). But beyond this, I can see no redeeming virtues. In a genre which is littered with astoundingly bad books, this book is a standout, and is among the "hated classics" like Reif's statistical mechanics book or J.D. Jackson's E&M book. But even those books, which are admittedly overly-difficult and often obtuse, do contain a lot of quality thought and valuable knowledge. A good book, when re-read, will reveal greater and greater depths of insight and knowledge.

But rereading this book only revealed greater levels of sloppy thought. Only the more elementary derivations are comprehensible; the rest are befuddling, and I found that I had to write my own derivations and look up alternatives because the examples were either unconvincing, incomprehensible, or seemed to be based on incorrect physical reasoning. Ironically, I found that this book improved my confidence in mechanics because I had to spend so much time trying to compensate for the enormous failings logic, calculation, and pedagogy. But I'd still give it zero stars if I could.

This book is just plain bad (a judgement I very rarely make), and I am very curious as to whether the reviewers who defend the book really thought about its contents or tried to follow all of its logic step by step, as one should do during any serious examination of a science text. Now some reviewers had good teachers, in which case they probably paid more attention to their lecture notes than the book. An individual skilled with mathematical manipulation can do surprisingly difficult problems without thinking very much about the underlying physical concepts or looking at any part of a derivation other than the part in the box. Finally, a very bright person may simply think through matters for themselves during and after a class, not taking time to examine the book. So I am not insulting the readers who gave it good reviews; I'm sure they did well in class, since students who get good grades don't write vitriol-filled reviews about the required text on Amazon.com. But I know they didn't really read it carefully.

Instructors often choose this book because they were taught from previous editions (which may be superior), and may be too lazy or recalcitrant to change their ways. Although I often got cross looks from my professors for complaining about it, they generally agreed with my criticisms when I pushed the issue. But I didn't need to convince them. I overheard one professor bashing Chapter 4 as "just hacked together at the last minute because the material is sexy and fashionable." And right he was, for that chapter contains the worst explanations of nonlinear dynamics concepts I have ever seen (even if you discount the wrongly-printed Poincare sections towards the end). This same teacher admitted that he had spend over twenty minutes trying to understand the explanation of a very simple formula (and he is a theoretician who knows far more math than the average physicist).
Another fellow I knew, a Ph.D who was teaching an advanced mechanics class at my school for the first time, and was asked to use Marion, rewrote just about every example and explanation in the book for his students because he found them incomprehensible or too obtuse for beginners.

So don't feel bad if this book befuddled you. You're not alone, either among the great (Ph.D theoreticians and experimentalists) or the small (bile-spouting nobodies with undergraduate degree only).

Finally, a bit of advice for students: If you were made to buy this book, I recommend that you go to your library and find books about classical mechanics. Pick up a book or two that doesn't have the name "Thornton" on the cover. Now, it may be too easy (French's "Newtonian Mechanics" is less mathematical, but I still recommend it) or too hard (Goldstein is for highly motivated and prepared undergrads only), but I can tell you in all confidence that the random mechanics book you pick out will be better than the one you have now.

i agree to a lesser or greater extent with many of the polar opinions expressed here. my professors, despite their continued use of the book, have a bit of distaste for it. they claim previous editions were better. i cannot attest to the quality of the earlier editions, but i can say that the current one is not a very good text. but i will concur with the others in that the book does a fantastic job of explaining lagrangian and hamiltonian dynamics.

the downside is that this was the only portion i fully understood after leaving my mechanics class. a research seminar on gravitational lensing would give me a second swing at the central-force motion chapter, which i did, in all honesty, find easier to read the second time around.

i believe a second look at many of the sections would prove to be very helpful to those that are troubled. one thing in M&T, however, is simply egregious: the problems are sloppy, poorly described, and overly complicated. if the goal is to achieve a better understanding of the material, these questions fail miserably. good exercises are lost amidst mathematics that are overly troublesome to really be useful.

having a course that discusses mathematical methods in physics before diving into this book is a great idea. i used potter and goldberg's "mathematical methods" and found it to be a very useful text, both as a teaching device and as a reference. combined with marion's text, i feel that one could certainly wade through classical mechanics.

this book does not give any insight on the classical theory of mechanics.Also there is not enough explanations on the subjects.and as an additional disadvantage to all these it does not provide good examples for the reader. the writer should have provided much more figures for the reader in order to make his subjects more clear

Marion is dead and Mr.Thornton should have left the text be. The only changes Thornton made were bad ones. The examples are incomplete, Symbols are introduced without definition. The problems are challenging if one could ever discern what the question is! To top it all off the author almost blindly takes word for word sections straight out of Goldstein's classic text. Now this is not particularly bad, he is given reference, but Goldstein is thorough. This text is lost in laziness. The key steps which I feel a student needs specific direction, are left out! So a word to instructors who teach undergraduate mechanics...just use Goldstein, and design problems of your own. Marion and Thornton's text is in need for replacement

I had the misfortune of taking a class that used this book. This book contains piles of mathematical expressions barely any of which are adequatelly explained. This text is intended to be used in courses that introduce mathematical methods in physics, what it actually does, is present some qualitative ideas and some equations that don't really seem to connect to the text unless you already know the material. This book would make a nice rewiew material for someone who learned the subject already, however, in no way it provides any real insight into the priciples of physics that it attempts to explain.

This book really is one of those unfortunate examples that are targeted at beginnig students, but are only readable to professors.

I fail to understand why is this book become a standard required text for undergrad mechanics in all the major American universities. The book describes at length esoteric problems and concepts (such as the falling chain tension using energy conservation in chater 9) while completely ignores basic things such as Principle of Virtual work,statics & stability in systems of Particles. In all it is an average text with lot of useless space age stuff which the author seems to brag about.

I was fortunate to have an excellent instructor for my mechanics courses, and we used this book in both semesters. Although it *is* true that the problems are rather vaguely stated, if one has an instructor who's good, and is willing to help figure out what the problems ask for, it's a good text. Quite a few grad schools assume its depth for preparation, too. And the sections on the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian approaches are quite good, although an intuitive "feeling" for them is not communicated or developed. I wish Feynman had spent more time on them in his Lectures!