Customer Reviews

Mechanics

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If physicists could weep, they would weep over this book. The book is devastingly brief whilst deriving, in its few pages, all the great results of classical mechanics. Results that in other books take take up many more pages. I first came across Landau's mechanics many years ago as a brash undergrad. My prof at the time had given me this book but warned me that it's the kind of book that ages like wine. I've read this book several times since and I have found that indeed, each time is more rewarding than the last.

The reason for the brevity is that, as pointed out by previous reviewers, Landau derives mechanics from symmetry. Historically, it was long after the main bulk of mechanics was developed that Emmy Noether proved that symmetries underly every important quantity in physics. So instead of starting from concrete mechanical case-studies and generalising to the formal machinery of the Hamilton equations, Landau starts out from the most generic symmetry and dervies the mechanics. The 2nd laws of mechanics, for example, is derived as a consequence of the uniqueness of trajectories in the Lagragian. For some, this may seem too "mathematical" but in reality, it is a sign of sophisitication in physics if one can identify the underlying symmetries in a mechanical system. Thus this book represents the height of theoretical sophistication in that symmetries are used to derive so many physical results.

The difficulty with this approach, and the reason why this book is not a beginner's book, is that to the follow symmetric arguments, one really has to have already mastered vector calculus. Ideally, you should be able to transform coordinate in your sleep, perform integrals without missing a beat, whether they be line, area, or path, and differentiate functions in many dimensions. The arguments are not sloppy, as some have claimed - it only seems so if you have not mastered vector calculus.

Tradition says that in Plato's academy was engraved the phrase, "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here", so should the modern theoretical physicist, with Landau's bible in hand, march under the arches engraved with the words "Let no one ignorant of symmetry enter here".

Classical Mechanics by H. Goldstein was the assigned text for a senior year course on CM. In all fairness, Goldstein does introduce tools and concepts useful to more advanced study in the subject, so I would turn to G. for a second reading on these topics. He also discusses the connections between classical to quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, Landau's presentation of the core of CM is clearer and more direct. For learning about the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms, rigid body rotation, small oscillations and canonical transformation, I found Landau to be the better book.

This marvellous book of Landau, Lifshitz is the best adult presentation of "classical" classical mechanics, that is, leaving aside problems of stability, chaos, etc. With this proviso, the book is perfect. It is very short, not by omitting things, but by choosing (and rigidly adhering to it) a very sound philosophy: exploring the connection between symmetries and conservation laws. This explains why the dynamics is based on the action principle, which, as shown by Wigner, is the optimum language for expliciting the discoveries of Emmy Noether. The whole book follows this line, making the exposition very original and, at points, quite surprising (as when the mass is proved to be positive). In my opinion the climax of the book is the theory of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, along the ideas of Jacobi. I know of no place where this is so admirably done. Simple and beautiful. After learning it, and the applications contained in the book, you can learn the miracles ! Landau and Lifshitz perform with this equation in all areas of physics, particularly in General Relativity.

This book(and very hotly contested by their Classical Theory of Fields) has to be the most gorgeous exposition on classical physics to be found. Crystal clear, yet concise and perfectly logical as is to be expected from all of Landau's works. The material is so beautifully developed that this is one of the few places where it is possible to see how each piece of the classical mechanics puzzle fits together. If not for the rest of the book, the sections on the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation, Maupertuis Principle and a small but absolutely incredible section on mechanical similarity are simply a must read. Goldstein(the general) standard suffers from several defects, notably logical inconsistency within the own text(A complaint that can never be made of any of Landau's books). Above all, This book is the perfect keystone to the remaining books of their series, and as such should be read before attempting any of the remaining volumes.

Lastly regarding criticisms that this book does not tend itself to non-integrability and classical chaos I suppose these are justified statments, but considering that this book was never written with such goals in mind, the arguments are irrelevant. There are several excellent references available on such material(including a recently added section in Goldstein) which will satisfy people looking for such topics. But this volume should feature on the bookshelf of anyone that has any interest in classical mechanics and wishes to read the treatment of the subject by a master.

Nowhere else would you find classical mechanics presented so elegantly, so efficiently, and with so much sophistication. However, this is a book that will be enjoyed only by those who already are familiar with the overall landscape of classical mechanics. Let's face it, a classical-mechanics virgin would be devastated if he/she used the book as the intro. There's just too much maturity, mathematical and physical, that's expected of the reader.

Again, NOT recommended for beginners. I am pretty sure Landau himself did not initially learn classical mechanics this way.

I should be studying General Relativity right now instead of writing this reveiw, but I'm studying GR from Landau's Field Theory book, and I was so moved by the perfection of his writing that I had to put this review in for my beloved Mechanics book. So here it is ... If it wasn't for Landau, I wouldn't understand physics. He speaks to me in a way that nobody in the world can, clearly, with purpose, and he senses the questions that I have and answers them in a word or two. I used Goldstein's book and Saletan's book for Mechanics, and they all had wonderful stuff about Special Relativity and Nonlinear stuff, but for the meat, for the stuff that sits in your gut and makes you finally feel full, finally feel that you understand what is really happening, there is only Landau. And as I work my way through his books, I finally understand why the whole physics community of Russia banded together to save their 'Dau from the clutches of death. It was simple, they loved him, as I love him, because he makes physics something tangible, something that feels right, something that allows me to look up for once, instead of feeling crushed under the weight of the math and the theory. Hopefully soon, when I have finished this class and his Field Theory book, I will write a review for that one too, but it won't be very much different from this one. HOWEVER, I do have a complaint, and it is directed at the publisher of this book. My book was bound improperly, and it is missing part of the last section of the book. The printing is horrible, (it has been printed in India on poor-quality paper) and in some cases it makes it difficult to read. I'm sure I can send this book back to the publisher and they would replace it for me, but I can't part with it now. I feel that for the price of this thin little paperback, 50-something dollars, that this should not look like a rip-off version of the book. The publisher should use higher quality paper, printing, and maybe even re-set the equations and typography. If 'Dau could see the quality of this book, I'm sure he would be upset, and that is wrong for Butterworth Heinemann, the publisher. If I hit the Lotto someday, I hope to buy these books away from the B-H and give them the respect they deserve.

**Note: I'm adding this note about two years later, and the publisher of the book very graciously replaced my defective copy for a good one. I also have to say that the new printing is much better than the old printing. Thanks publisher.

This is the first volume in the famous course on theoretical physics. The writing is concise and clear. This is how real physicists do mechanics.

There are other mechanics books to choose from. Maybe my second choice would be Goldstein's. But this one is the best.

Start with the first chapter. In ten pages you'll learn about the Principle of Least Action, Lagrangians, and Lagrange's Equations. Then do the four exercises at the end of the chapter. Find those Lagrangians! If you want to be adventurous, plug them back into Lagrange's equations and find the equations of motion. You'll feel as though you've acquired magical power. And the rest of the book is like that, too.

Once you've taken calculus, you'll be ready for this. And it's definitely the way to start learning physics. Try it.

First, I completely concur with all those who have suggested that this book is the pinnacle of mechanics. I have a copy of the soft-cover text that I have read (and reread) for years. "Brilliant" doesn't do it justice. If you are serious about understanding classical mechanics and seeing the connections between classical and modern physics, this concise text is a must-read.

Loving the text as I do, I was excited to get a copy for Kindle. I justified the expense (on a book I already own) by noting the aging, dog-eared, well used character of my physical copy. How sadly disappointed I was with the purchase. While essentially the same as the original, the production of the Kindle edition uses odd type faces for the Greek/scientific notation that is inline (which is distracting and annoying to try to parse). Equations are simply scanned copies from the original (scalable vector equations would have been too much trouble, I guess). While this could have been OK, the publisher chose to scan the figures in grayscale (instead of b/w) and to do it at a remarkably low resolution. The result is that the equations are often too small to read inline with the text and zooming them just give you a larger, fuzzier version. Really less than ideal. In fact, I would say the production values on this one are the worse that I have seen for a mathematical/physics text on Kindle. So sad that this should be done to such an outstanding text.

So 5 stars for the book, 1 for the kindle edition -> 3 stars overall.

This book was recommended as a supplimentary text for our mechanics course. This book is 100% better than any other mechanics book I've looked at. The explanations are very clear, especially for non-inertial & rotational reference frames and the derevations for conservation of energy, momenta, and angular momenta (integrals of motion).

Includes extensive section on Euler angle derivation and tops. The examples in this text are quite difficult (more difficult than your typical undergraduate text), but they are all solved with partial work, so they are still helpful for studying.

Overall a clearly written text with good examples and excellent derivations.

Landau is to physics what Cliff's Notes are to novels. Landau's books contain everything you need to know, but often leave out the details trusting the reader to figure things out for themselves. And as with Cliff's Notes, the same paradox exists: if one reads Cliff's Notes in conjunction with the book itself, then he can expect to have a great understanding of book. If, however, one reads Landau's book without first knowing the subject, he can expect to be left with a partial understanding of the material.

This book provides a no frills, no nonsense serving of physics, but the reader needs to know enough to be able to connect the dots. Read only after you understand the subject at a decent level.