Customer Reviews

Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics (Graduate Texts in Mathematics)

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Written by a great mathematician of our time, Vladimir Arnol'd, this truly outstanding book represents classical mechanics from a unifying geometrical point of view and is a "must-to-read" book for any graduate student working in the field. Proofs are wonderfully clear and concise, problems are refreshingly stimulating, ideas are beautifully intuitive. Buy this book now and you will get a long time good friend and teacher!

Extremely stimulating, uses Galileo to motivate Newton's laws instead of postulating them. Treatment of Bertrand's theorem is beautiful, but contains one error (took me 2 years before I realized where..). However, I know of only one physicist who successully worked out all the missing steps and taught from this book. I know mathematicians who have cursed it. I used/use it for inspiration. The treatment of Liouville's integrability theorem, I found too abstract, found the old version in Whittaker's Analytical Dynamics to be clearer (Arnol'd might laugh sarcastically at this claim!)--for an interesting variation, but more from the standpoint of continuous groups, see the treatment in ch. 16 of my Classical Mechanics (Cambridge, 1997). In my text I do not restrict the discussion of integrability/nonintegrability to Hamiltonian systems but include driven dissipative systems as well. Another strength of Arnol'd: his discussion of caustics, useful for the study of galaxy formation (as I later learned while doing work in cosmology). Also, I learned from Arnol'd that Poisson brackets are not restricted to canonical systems (see also my ch. 15). I guess that every researcher in nonlinear dynamics should study Arnol'd's books, he's the 'alte Hasse' in the field.

Best book on CM (based most on symplectic formulation). Extremely clear if one has enough patience to follow exactly the author's way and to work out the proposed stimulating problems. Contains an original way of introducing differential forms, integration of differential forms and homology/De Rahm's thm.: you fully get in the subject in few pages ! The first part does not make use of symplectic formalism but is also quite original and stimulating. The level is last yr. undergr. 1st yr. graduate. Very useful if used with E. ott (Chaos in Dynamical Systems) for studying nonlinear dynamics.

Arnold shines for clarity, completeness and rigour. But, at the same time, he requires a remarkable intellectual effort on the part of the reader (at least a physicist or an engineer). Some readers might see this as a book of math rather than physics, but that would not be fair: Arnold always stresses the geometrical meaning and the physical intuition of what he states or demonstrates. You can take full advantage from the effort of reading this book only if you master a wide range of mathematical topics: essentially differential geometry, ODEs and PDEs and some topology. That's not always true for engineer or physics students at the beginning graduate level. For that kind of readers, Goldstein is a much better fit. Arnold can (and maybe should) be read afterwards.
On the other hand, the exercises, although not very numberous, are very well conceived and help a lot to deepen the comprehension of the text. Also, the order of the topics is linear and very effective from a didactic point of view. The exposition is clear, concise and always goes straight to the point. Thanks to these features, it is one of the most effective books for self-teaching I ever happened to read.
From a physical point of view, the domain of applications is essentially limited to discrete systems. Furthermore, the electromagnetism and relativity are not even cited, although they can be viewed as the logical completion of classical mechanics (see, for example, Goldstein). But the extreme generality of the approach largely balance the more restricted physical domain. In my opinion, the best book you can read on the topics.

This book is an example of great scientific writing style. Not all the epsilon and deltas are spelled out, and yet the the proofs are nowhere short of rigorous. Besides, they convey insight and intuition: the opposite of Gallavotti's "the element of mechanics" (a very competent book, but obsessed with details). As all the great mathematicians, Arnold separates what's essential from what is not, what is interesting from what is pedantic. It The result is a challenging, wonderful book. I used it (partially) as a second year undergraduate text, and the teacher stressed in the first class that "if you understand Arnold you know classical mechanics". My advice is: get a good grasp of differential geometry and topology and of the tools of the trade (mathematical analysis, ODEs, PDEs) before studying it. Otherwise it will be still readable, but will not be fully appreciated. A last note: it's interesting that Stephen Smale, a mathematician whoshare many interests with V.I.Arnold and is equally illustrious, is another master of style and clarity. You may want to check his book on dynamical systems and his essays.

I approached reading this book with a certain amount of trepidation. I thought that like with many mechanics books, I will be forced to put it down after page three because the struggle of continuing is too onerous. Surprising, I have gotten past chapter 5 and wish to continue. In other words Arnold does not expect too much from the reader. Contains some formal proofs but not enough dull you interest in the subject. Also unlike many mechanics books it is not filled with endless pompous writing (e.g Goldstein, and Salatan ) but gets directly to the point. Also I like the way the problems are presented. After every couple of paragraphs a problem (of not too great of difficulty) is given for the reader to try. This promotes reinforcement of the subject material. Some of the solutions are given and I only wish I had them all. In short the best advanced classical mechanics book I have come across.

The book is full of little enjoyable details (jewels). Arnold is one of the few mathematicians which approaches problems with a very geometric point of view. In his interview with S.H. Lui he mentions how algebraic picture has dominated the research in mathematics and how he has tried to counter that. One can see the trace of his ingenuity all over this book. What some may call as handwaving in math circles is indeed called as physical (or geometric) intuition in physics community and is being actively encouraged.

The chapters on oscillations (chap. 5) and perturbation theory (chap. 10) are very instructive. For example, parametric resonance is discussed concisely in chapter 5 which you won't be able to find it anywhere else. where can you learn about "Arnold's tongues" better than in Arnold's book?

There are so many appendices at the end of the book. They are often very specialized and I don't recommend you to read them on your first read.

In conclusion, I recommend this book to any physics graduate student. In fact, I hope one day it will be used as a text book for courses in classical mechanics.

This book is an excellent introduction to the world of classical physics for NON-PHYSICISTS. While some physicists will no doubt find it accessible, there is considerable reduction of physical concepts in order to get to the heart of the ideas underlying the formalism. Also, the material goes beyond what most physicists (non-theoreticians) will find practical.

He focuses largely on a geometric presentation, in the language of differential geometry, symplectic geometry, differential forms, Riemannian manifolds and includes a large amount of algebraic necessities. This is not a cookbook for learning how to solve classical mechanics, nor is it a math book per se, but it is a wonderful collection of introductions to a vast amount of useful mathematical formalism that permeates the physical literature. I would strongly recommend it to someone needing a thorough supplementary mechanics text, one that relies on very little physical insight and focuses on the geometric and algebraic structures underlying them.

The chapters are very well self-contained for the most part so you can skip to topics you find more appealing without feeling lost. Also, his presentation style is very clever, in case you're a fan of quick thinking and novel presentations (who isn't?).

The prerequisites are familiarity with somewhat advanced calculus and "mathematical maturity". Basic knowledge of group theory would also make it an easier read.

This book has theorems and proofs, unlike most mechanics books. Being a mathematics book, the objects are clearly defined and the hypothesis clearly stated. If you are a math student trying to understand physicists then this is clearly the best book to read. This is also a good place to find a motivated proof of the general Stokes' theorem for differential forms. The standard treatment defines d of a form and then magically proves stokes' theorem. Here it is done the other way around, and the mysterious definition of d is made into the theorem.

I took my First course of Symplectic Geometry and i used this book, is a perfect introduction to this branch of Geometry. The ideas were very natural and easy, so let you understood very well the real meaning of the results.