Classical Mechanics (3rd Edition) |  | Authors: Herbert Goldstein, Charles P. Poole, John L. Safko
Publisher: Addison Wesley
List Price: $146.60
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Seller: Om Goit
Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 357852
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 3
Pages: 680
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 7.6 x 1.5
ISBN: 0201657023
Dewey Decimal Number: 531
EAN: 9780201657029
ASIN: 0201657023
Publication Date: June 25, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
For thirty years this has been the acknowledged standard in advanced classical mechanics courses. This classic book enables readers to make connections between classical and modern physics - an indispensable part of a physicist's education. In this new edition, Beams Medal winner Charles Poole and John Safko have updated the book to include the latest topics, applications, and notation, to reflect today's physics curriculum. They introduce readers to the increasingly important role that nonlinearities play in contemporary applications of classical mechanics. New numerical exercises help readers to develop skills in how to use computer techniques to solve problems in physics. Mathematical techniques are presented in detail so that the book remains fully accessible to readers who have not had an intermediate course in classical mechanics. For college instructors and students.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 25
 REALLY boring March 13, 2010
Narada (Princeton, NJ, USA)
Theere are lots of fun books on classical mechanics, which is a beautiful subject. This is not one of them -- I found it eye-glazingly tedious as an undergraduate, and still do. For the aforementioned fun books, check out Landau and Lifschitz, or Sommerfeld, or (of course) Feynmann.
 Once a great textbook March 1, 2009
LB (New York, NY)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is great for learning the topic for the first time, and even better once you're looking for a good reference at a later time. It goes very deeply into the physics and philosophy of classical mechanics. The only background needed is vector calculus. The rest should flow naturally. If you don't understand everything on the first read, as some reviewers mentioned, this is not really a problem. This often happens with advanced textbooks, the authors know so much that they can't help but write discussions that are of a more general nature. In the case of Goldstein, you should be able to keep on reading without getting lost. This book is amazing, it covers point-particle physics up to continuum mechanics, and builds everything up to a point where you can go on a and study relativity and quantum mechanics with good confidence.
I would give this book 6 stars if I could. However, the 3rd edition has turned what used to be an excellent book into some kind of butchery and orgy or less relevant topics. For example, very few people doing research actually care about chaos theory, aside from its coolness. While I learned this stuff from a mathematically rigorous standpoint decades ago, I never got to use it since then. Also I find it difficult to discuss chaos theory when stochastic processes are ignored. When doing experiments, you always deal with noise which will actually bury a lot of the interesting dynamics. I really don't see the point of altering Goldstein to cover chaos theory when several excellent textbooks on the topic already exist (Arnold, Devaney, Scheinermann).
I bought the 3rd edition without knowing about its new slant. At the very least, they should have kept what was in the 2nd edition. Instead, they deleted entire sections which I used to love, such as the derivation of the Lagrangian density for an acoustic field (Appendix E). It's totally gone! I am no longer using the 3rd edition copy, and would consider selling it or getting rid of it. I am much better off with my 2nd edition copy.
 Excellent March 2, 2008
Marc Collette
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
An outstandingly good quality book, both in content and in the book itself. Very satisfied.
Could be worse... February 16, 2008
T. Nicholas Kypreos (Gainesville, FL)
Goldstein has very hit and miss moments in the book. Sometimes he is incredibly clear and sometimes he leaves a big question mark over your head with drawn out text. He could have been much more concise in his explanations as he tends to ramble on making a large chunk of text unreadable. However, every graduate student will learn the Kameltonian ;) and appreciate the way Goldstein can present a problem. I would recommend this in conjunction with Landau's text on mechanics.
 Powerful, somewhat old-fashioned January 27, 2008
Yevgeny Kats (Cambridge, MA)
This is one of the most common books used in advanced undergraduate classes in mechanics. It covers the fundamentals of the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalism, and many applications are analyzed in great depth. The book is written very carefully, and is full of insightful comments along the way. Due to this reason, the book may look a bit heavy for some readers, but time-conscious readers should be aware of the fact that many of these comments can be skipped without damage. On the other hand, those who do read all the comments learn a lot.
Unfortunately, the book is a little bit old-fashioned (the first version of the book was conceived in the late 1940s), and I believe some of the comments and lines of reasoning would be written a bit differently today. For example, the book gives the impression that Newton's laws are more fundamental than the action principle, while it is more useful to think the other way around. The presentation of field theory in the last chapter is brief and somewhat cumbersome. Nowadays, that field theory is a standard tool of modern physics (it is essential for elementary particle physics and very useful in condensed matter physics), I would prefer a book that puts more emphasis on field theory and its various applications.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 25
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