Customer Reviews

Classical Mechanics: Transformations, Flows, Integrable and Chaotic Dynamics

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ok, so McCauley does succeed in utilizing very useful techniques such as integrability, phase flows, etc., in his book which gets you thinking in terms of concepts every grad student should know that is applicable to many different areas in physics. But, he needs to do a couple of things, that I can think of off the top of my head, to make his book better:

1) When I bought the book, I paid for it to learn physics, not to hear him bash the Catholic Church and his thoughts on the multi-causal nature of what factors may have hindered the progress of science throughout history, such as in the 1st chapter. Stick with physics buddy! A Carl Sagan he is not. Also the grammar needs some serious work. Sometimes his sentences are not technically sentences. In fact, I don't know what they are, but grammar is not his virtue.

2) GET YOUR INDICES RIGHT!!! There are way too many errors which is confusing for a student learning this for the first time.

3) If you are going to copy problems out of Goldstein, at least copy them correctly. Basically, there is serious revision that needs to occur b/c there are way too many typos.

Besides that, I like his approach...it's modern and interesting, but things could be organized better. Basically, I think you are better starting off with Goldstein and then using McCauley for reference if you plan to do non-linear dynamics etc., later on in your physics career!

This book provides an excellent discussion of "integrability" which dispells some confusions that exist about this subject. The style is accessible and the book does not require years of study of differential geometry before reading. My only complaint is that sometimes the discussion drags on longer than I like; a more concise presentation could be made in places. However, this is a minor quibble and a prolonged discussion is definitely less of a defect than an abstract, poorly explained discussion that one finds in too many other books.

Unfortunately, McCauley fails to meet the stated goal of this book as "... an advanced text for first-year graduate students in physics and engineering taking a standard classical mechanics course." The perspective presented by McCauley would be enlightening, were it not for this book's significant flaws. Foremost, the number of mistakes in equations, diagrams, problems, and the text presents an obstacle to understanding. The book appears to have been published without review by an editor, let alone one with a knowledge of mechanics. To be fair, some of the descriptions are lucid and well written, specifically some sections on flows in phase space, but generally topics seem to be incompletely, though sometimes verbosely, presented. The problems, often lifted from other sources, poorly illustrate the concepts and methods presented. Furthermore, the book suffers from a poor index which limits its usefulness as a reference. Given the flaws, I cannot recommend the use of this book as a text nor reference.

I purchased and studied this book shortly after completing an undergraduate class in mechanics. It was incredibly enlightening. After studying this, I realized that I had only received a partial glimpse via the standard undergrad mechanics course. McCauley provides the models to explain dynamics variations that you might think were not discernable.

It is a difficult but worthy journey. "Just buy it and the insight
will come"