Customer Reviews

Classical Mechanics

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The five "reviews" before mine are all from undergraduate physics majors at Amherst College. All five students were in the same class, which used a pre-publication edition of Taylor's book. I think their reviews reflect these facts, and say more about the students than they do about the book.

That being said, I also used pre-publication editions, but as a professor teaching the class. Before this book I had used the other "standards" (Marion and Thorton, etc). Taylor's book is by far the best of all of them. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I gave the author a lot of feedback about the material covered in the chapters and the problems. I wouldn't have spent all that time on the book if I didn't believe it was one of the best physics books I've ever read.

I use the book in the Jr-Sr mechanics course at Bates College. Since our students have already had a semester of classical mechanics from the book by Kleppner and Kolenkow, I begin with Chapter Six in Taylor's book (Calculus of Variations). The presentation is meticulous, the concepts are explained clearly and correctly (not always the case in other books), and the examples are carefully chosen. The problems are carefully chosen and carefully worded. Sometimes they present new material, e.g., the Thomas Precession, the rapidity, etc., using examples that clearly illustrate the essential points.

I also have taught the first six chapters and they are very refreshing and well-written. They are at just the right level for a student coming out of a calculus-based introductory physics course and, in addition, give a wonderful discussion of air resistance and viscious forces as they apply to automobiles, oil drops in the Millikan experiment, and many other practical situations. The examples are quite interesting and informative, and it was refreshing to read Taylor's original treatment of this important yet often short-changed subject.

Although this is a "first" edition, it comes after several pre-publication editions, all of which were class tested. Consequently, material that students found hard to understand was rewritten, hints were added to some of the problems, and essentially all the typographical errors were discovered and corrected. So the book has none of the drawbacks usually associated with first editions.

I especially enjoyed the optional chapter on Chaos. It is one of the best presentations of this potentially confusing subject I have ever read.

I have assigned chapters for independent study to undergraduate senior thesis majors. All of them have commented on how helpful the book was to them and how easy it was to understand on their own.

In a post-use review in the American Journal of Physics (April 2004, Vol. 72, Issue 4, p. 559), Professor Gayle Cook said "I find this a superb text. The clarity and readability of the book is so much better than anything else on the market that I confidently predict it will soon be the most widely used book on the subject." The rest of her review is very informative and well worth reading.

Finally, to get an idea of the the clarity and excellence of John Taylor's work, be sure to look at the reviews on amazon.com of his book "An Introduction to Error Analysis."

I strongly recommend this book, it is well written, clear, without typographical errors, with many excercises which you can really do after having studied the text. Some people say it is verbose: sometimes it is true, BUT when you study alone it is a lot better to have more rather than less explanations. I wish there was a similar book on quantum mechanics. The binding is good and this adds to the good feeling of studying it. This book should become soon a bestseller. I suggest only to add the answers of the even-numbered problems, sometimes it may help.

"Classical mechanics" is a brilliant book, certainly one of the very best at this level. The author doesn't save space when a thorough introduction to a topic or problem is needed. Very often an intuitive explanation is given first, followed by a formal exposition, and then comes the real gem - a qualitative discussion of the mathematical results which brings physics again in the picture with full force. The chapters on oscillations are outstanding, same as the exposition of generalized coordinates and generalized forces. Of course, not every detail in derivations has to be given, and it is the choice of what to include and what to skip that makes the flow of exposition logical and coherent. This book is a joy to read, it is excellent for self-study.

This book is well written and is easy to learn from whether taking a Classical Mechanics class or learning it on your own. Unlike some books that expect you to know Differential Equations, this one sets it up for you along the way.
It also has 11 chapters for a mechanics class and six bonus chapters that can be used as supplementary material.
I would recommend this book for future students.

This text is the best upper-division undergraduate take on classical mechanics that I've seen, and I've seen quite a few. The only reason I didn't give the book a 5 star rating is that the publisher appears to have cut costs on the printing quality of the book and it WILL fall apart on you. Sure it can make it through a semester course(or even two quarters depending on how careful you are) but the binding starts to fall apart and the 'hardcover' is pretty light and not very strong, giving the entire book a really cheap feel to it.

The exercises are really nice. The short answers for a lot of the odd problems are in the back of the book which makes self checking, or even self study, much easier. Each problem is clearly marked with one, two, or three stars for difficulty so you know exactly what you're getting yourself into. However I would agree that some of the three star problems are hit and miss, that is to say some may take you a couple hours as might be expected or they'll take 15 minutes(depending on your math background). Speaking of math background I would be remiss if I didn't mention that anyone who has taken a class in differential equations is going to be frustrated by the fact that Taylor really walks you through solving differential equations at certain parts of the book. Luckily he doesn't waste the whole book on this and it is easy to just skip it, however this does make the book much more accessible to eager freshmen who want to look ahead. In fact Taylor presents the material so well that one could almost use the book for a first introduction to classical mechanics(given they have taken some multivariable calculus).

When Taylor begins a discussion of a new topic, or even one that should be review, it usually goes something like this: he begins with elementary ideas that are basically review, then transitions into a simple explanation of new material, next he walks you through SEVERAL examples, and bit by bit ups the difficulty until before you know it you're through the worst of it.

The optional sections are done very well. You can easily teach yourself the material or use it to supplement another class when you come across the material later. I personally found chapter 14 on scattering helpful in explaining the basics of classical scattering when I was doing scattering in a quantum class. I enjoyed chapter 13 on Hamiltonian mechanics, after doing this you're ready and waiting for a graduate treatment of the subject. Chapter 15 is an introduction to special relativity, and although its pretty good it's also the longest chapter in the book. It really seems to drag in my opinion, but don't get me wrong it's still okay for an introduction. Chapter 12 is a good starting point for nonlinear problems given the reader's background at this point. Obviously he isn't going to be talking about flow on manifolds, but he does very well with the tool's which are available to the reader at this point. Honestly I didn't really bother looking closely at the chapter on continuum mechanics but it seems like its a good introduction to the subject given the mathematical background of the student up to that point.

Like many physics majors, I have become used to dealing with undergraduate physics texts that are mediocre at best. The explanations are usually confusing, either because they are too dry or too verbose. If examples/derivations are included they are rarely practical and one tends to wonder at the author's reasoning for choosing those. I often find myself only using the textbooks to work the homework problems, and base almost all my knowledge on class notes.

This text is a welcome deviation from the standard: I have found it extremely easy to understand and follow. There are numerous examples and derivations, and I have referred to them more than once to gain familiarity with the topic. The book became my friend and ally; a priceless resource for the class. My course has only gone through chapter 13, but all the chapters that we covered were written well.

Taylor's book isn't bad. However, it does have some problems, the chief one being verbosity. As other reviewers have mentioned, Taylor often uses quite a few words to say not very much at all. It seems as though he tried to mimic the chatty style of Griffiths, but went a bit overboard. Though I generally don't mind verbosity, at times even I was annoyed by the slow pace of the book - especially after I checked Goldstein's book out of the library and was able to see how much more elegantly and efficiently he was able to cover the same material (and more!).

The upside to Taylor's wordiness is that he generally manages to explain everything in an easy-to-understand manner. It may even be easy enough to serve as a text for an introductory physics course, though that could be a stretch. Unfortunately, this book is probably at a level too high for an introductory course, but at the same time too low for a more advanced course.

The overall organisation of the book is not bad. Taylor divides it into "essential" material for a one-semester course and optional material that can be studied if time permits. The first five chapters review Newtonian mechanics (Newton's Laws, projectile motion, momentum, energy and harmonic oscillations). If the book is being used in an intermediate class, these chapters should be blasted through as quickly as possible (possibly just left to reader), in order to get to the more interesting material in the rest of the book. The essential material is rounded out by chapters on the calculus of variations, Lagrange's equation, the two-body central force problem, non-inertial reference frames, rigid-body rotation, coupled oscillations and normal modes, all designed to be read in sequence. The optional material consists of five chapters on nonlinear mechanics and chaos, Hamiltonian mechanics, collision theory, special relativity and continuum mechanics. These chapters are designed to be mutually independent - none depends on any of the others, so they can be read in any order.

There are plenty of problems, which Taylor labels with one, two or three stars, depending on their difficulty (though I personally found some of the two-star problems more challenging than most of the three-star ones). Taylor also includes some problems that need to be done using Mathematica or Maple, which is a plus. These problems are clearly marked and can give students some experience with this increasingly important software.

I had some trouble deciding between three and four stars, but eventually decided to go with three. However, I was already familiar with all of the mathematics Taylor introduces. Those who would be meeting eigenvalues and differential equations for the first time may find the book somewhat more interesting than I did.

I am an undergraduate at Rutgers who used this in my 300-level Mechanics courses last year. This has been, by far, the most helpful book for any course yet. Dr. Taylor does an amazing job of depicting how complex mechanical problems are solved, and still gives an immense repetoire of challenging exercises for the reader. He provides great assistance in solving complex differential equations, so little pre-requiste work is needed in this regard. This text is friendly to read, unlike any other text I have used-so much so that it can be read recreationally. Dr. Taylor also provides a gross amount of material, so instructors will find ample material to use for an entire year or more. To help allieviate this dillema, he also provides helpful assistance by marking essential and optional areas. No doubts that instructors and students will be pleased with their experience.

This book was used in an Undergraduate Classical Mechanics course I took- speaking as an individual student, I tend to rely heavily on my textbooks for learning purposes and focus a lot on the reading. This book was no exception.

The mathematics is good (some technical details are glossed over such as the use of differentials and infinitesimals throughout the differential equation techniques but this does not seem inappropriate to me given the level of the text). For the most part I like the material and the demonstration of the computational techniques. Personally, given the fact that the author places heavy emphasis on coordinate systems, I would have appreciated a brief exposition of some of the formalities behind differential geometry and the computation of basic differential forms. Such a cursory overview could have made some of these ideas easier to grasp (IMO).

The main things I really like:
1) The examples are (IMHO) very well done and presented(although very verbose at times, see below). The author did a great job here.
2) The author strikes a nice balance between super technical math and big picture perspective wrt the computational techniques themselves. The author also has the (very much appreciated) habit of noting the missing details in the computations and providing references for further inquiry.
3) The homework questions are starred according to difficulty(I think he factors importance in as well).
4) The homework questions are grouped according to section.

Now, what bothers me-
1) This book is WAY too wordy! Explanation is good, everybody likes explanation, but Taylor is not efficient at it. I found this book very hard to study from- I used Goldstein as an alternate reference (when needed) and appreciated the conciseness a little more(Although Goldstein can sometimes skip a lot of details- but that book is targeted to a different audience).
2) Related to the wordiness, I feel that the author actually explains too much at times so it can be very hard hard to decide what is important. Also, instead of having 10 Billion exercises at the end of each chapter, I wish the author would consider picking a smaller subset of those questions which serve the purpose of filling in some of the gaps in the reading.
3) This book is super computational, although I get a sense that Taylor is trying to convey theoretical ideas (and as a student, I do feel he does this successfully), it can be very hard to see the important ideas in this book because the computations really take center stage.

Personally, although I am giving this book a positive review due to its organization, well worked out examples and strong demonstration of fundamental computational techniques, I personally would have preferred a different book- one which is a little more efficient with its conveyance of deeper ideas and big picture perspective.

This textbook is comprehensive, clearly written, well-paced, and thoughtful. Taylor clearly is an experienced professor and understands well how to convey material to students. Whether this text is required for your intermediate/advanced undergraduate classical mechanics course or you are someone who wishes to brush up on mechanics, this is the book.