Download or read book The Principle of Least Action written by Alberto G. Rojo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text brings history and the key fields of physics together to present a unique technical discussion of the principles of least action.
Download or read book The Feynman lectures on physics Mainly electromagnetism and matter written by and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Principle of Least Action in Geometry and Dynamics written by Karl Friedrich Siburg and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2004-05-17 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New variational methods by Aubry, Mather, and Mane, discovered in the last twenty years, gave deep insight into the dynamics of convex Lagrangian systems. This book shows how this Principle of Least Action appears in a variety of settings (billiards, length spectrum, Hofer geometry, modern symplectic geometry). Thus, topics from modern dynamical systems and modern symplectic geometry are linked in a new and sometimes surprising way. The central object is Mather’s minimal action functional. The level is for graduate students onwards, but also for researchers in any of the subjects touched in the book.
Download or read book The Lazy Universe written by Jennifer Coopersmith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-04-28 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a rare book on a rare topic: it is about 'action' and the Principle of Least Action. A surprisingly well-kept secret, these ideas are at the heart of physical science and engineering. Physics is well known as being concerned with grand conservatory principles (e.g. the conservation of energy) but equally important is the optimization principle (such as getting somewhere in the shortest time or with the least resistance). The book explains: why an optimization principle underlies physics, what action is, what `the Hamiltonian' is, and how new insights into energy, space, and time arise. It assumes some background in the physical sciences, at the level of undergraduate science, but it is not a textbook. The requisite derivations and worked examples are given but may be skim-read if desired. The author draws from Cornelius Lanczos's book "The Variational Principles of Mechanics" (1949 and 1970). Lanczos was a brilliant mathematician and educator, but his book was for a postgraduate audience. The present book is no mere copy with the difficult bits left out - it is original, and a popularization. It aims to explain ideas rather than achieve technical competence, and to show how Least Action leads into the whole of physics.
Download or read book Feynman s Thesis written by Richard Phillips Feynman and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2005 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Feynman's never previously published doctoral thesis formed the heart of much of his brilliant and profound work in theoretical physics. Entitled ?The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics," its original motive was to quantize the classical action-at-a-distance electrodynamics. Because that theory adopted an overall space?time viewpoint, the classical Hamiltonian approach used in the conventional formulations of quantum theory could not be used, so Feynman turned to the Lagrangian function and the principle of least action as his points of departure.The result was the path integral approach, which satisfied ? and transcended ? its original motivation, and has enjoyed great success in renormalized quantum field theory, including the derivation of the ubiquitous Feynman diagrams for elementary particles. Path integrals have many other applications, including atomic, molecular, and nuclear scattering, statistical mechanics, quantum liquids and solids, Brownian motion, and noise theory. It also sheds new light on fundamental issues like the interpretation of quantum theory because of its new overall space?time viewpoint.The present volume includes Feynman's Princeton thesis, the related review article ?Space?Time Approach to Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics? [Reviews of Modern Physics 20 (1948), 367?387], Paul Dirac's seminal paper ?The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics'' [Physikalische Zeitschrift der Sowjetunion, Band 3, Heft 1 (1933)], and an introduction by Laurie M Brown.
Download or read book Variational Principles in Classical Mechanics written by Douglas Cline and published by . This book was released on 2018-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two dramatically different philosophical approaches to classical mechanics were proposed during the 17th - 18th centuries. Newton developed his vectorial formulation that uses time-dependent differential equations of motion to relate vector observables like force and rate of change of momentum. Euler, Lagrange, Hamilton, and Jacobi, developed powerful alternative variational formulations based on the assumption that nature follows the principle of least action. These variational formulations now play a pivotal role in science and engineering.This book introduces variational principles and their application to classical mechanics. The relative merits of the intuitive Newtonian vectorial formulation, and the more powerful variational formulations are compared. Applications to a wide variety of topics illustrate the intellectual beauty, remarkable power, and broad scope provided by use of variational principles in physics.The second edition adds discussion of the use of variational principles applied to the following topics:(1) Systems subject to initial boundary conditions(2) The hierarchy of related formulations based on action, Lagrangian, Hamiltonian, and equations of motion, to systems that involve symmetries.(3) Non-conservative systems.(4) Variable-mass systems.(5) The General Theory of Relativity.Douglas Cline is a Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.
Download or read book Variational Principles in Dynamics and Quantum Theory written by Wolfgang Yourgrau and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVHistorical, theoretical survey with many insights, much hard-to-find material. Hamilton’s principle, Hamilton-Jacobi equation, etc. /div
Download or read book Introduction To Lagrangian Mechanics An 2nd Edition written by Alain J Brizard and published by World Scientific Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-11-28 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to Lagrangian Mechanics begins with a proper historical perspective on the Lagrangian method by presenting Fermat's Principle of Least Time (as an introduction to the Calculus of Variations) as well as the principles of Maupertuis, Jacobi, and d'Alembert that preceded Hamilton's formulation of the Principle of Least Action, from which the Euler-Lagrange equations of motion are derived. Other additional topics not traditionally presented in undergraduate textbooks include the treatment of constraint forces in Lagrangian Mechanics; Routh's procedure for Lagrangian systems with symmetries; the art of numerical analysis for physical systems; variational formulations for several continuous Lagrangian systems; an introduction to elliptic functions with applications in Classical Mechanics; and Noncanonical Hamiltonian Mechanics and perturbation theory.The Second Edition includes a larger selection of examples and problems (with hints) in each chapter and continues the strong emphasis of the First Edition on the development and application of mathematical methods (mostly calculus) to the solution of problems in Classical Mechanics.New material has been added to most chapters. For example, a new derivation of the Noether theorem for discrete Lagrangian systems is given and a modified Rutherford scattering problem is solved exactly to show that the total scattering cross section associated with a confined potential (i.e., which vanishes beyond a certain radius) yields the hard-sphere result. The Frenet-Serret formulas for the Coriolis-corrected projectile motion are presented, where the Frenet-Serret torsion is shown to be directly related to the Coriolis deflection, and a new treatment of the sleeping-top problem is given.
Download or read book The Theoretical Minimum written by Leonard Susskind and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A master teacher presents the ultimate introduction to classical mechanics for people who are serious about learning physics "Beautifully clear explanations of famously 'difficult' things," -- Wall Street Journal If you ever regretted not taking physics in college -- or simply want to know how to think like a physicist -- this is the book for you. In this bestselling introduction to classical mechanics, physicist Leonard Susskind and hacker-scientist George Hrabovsky offer a first course in physics and associated math for the ardent amateur. Challenging, lucid, and concise, The Theoretical Minimum provides a tool kit for amateur scientists to learn physics at their own pace.
Download or read book The Development of the Action Principle written by Walter Dittrich and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-29 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the historical development of the principle of stationary action from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Reference is made to the most important contributors to this topic, in particular Bernoullis, Leibniz, Euler, Lagrange and Laplace. The leading theme is how the action principle is applied to problems in classical physics such as hydrodynamics, electrodynamics and gravity, extending also to the modern formulation of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, especially quantum electrodynamics. A critical analysis of operator versus c-number field theory is given. The book contains many worked examples. In particular, the term "vacuum" is scrutinized.The book is aimed primarily at actively working researchers, graduate students and historians interested in the philosophical interpretation and evolution of physics; in particular, in understanding the action principle and its application to a wide range of natural phenomena.
Download or read book The Principle of Least Action written by Philip Edward Bertrand Jourdain and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Galileo Unbound written by David D. Nolte and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-12 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Galileo Unbound traces the journey that brought us from Galileo's law of free fall to today's geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes. This book tells the history of spaces of expanding dimension and increasing abstraction and how they continue today to give new insight into the physics of complex systems. Galileo published the first modern law of motion, the Law of Fall, that was ideal and simple, laying the foundation upon which Newton built the first theory of dynamics. Early in the twentieth century, geometry became the cause of motion rather than the result when Einstein envisioned the fabric of space-time warped by mass and energy, forcing light rays to bend past the Sun. Possibly more radical was Feynman's dilemma of quantum particles taking all paths at once — setting the stage for the modern fields of quantum field theory and quantum computing. Yet as concepts of motion have evolved, one thing has remained constant, the need to track ever more complex changes and to capture their essence, to find patterns in the chaos as we try to predict and control our world.
Download or read book Mechanics written by L D Landau and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 1982-01-29 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Devoted to the foundation of mechanics, namely classical Newtonian mechanics, the subject is based mainly on Galileo's principle of relativity and Hamilton's principle of least action. The exposition is simple and leads to the most complete direct means of solving problems in mechanics.The final sections on adiabatic invariants have been revised and augmented. In addition a short biography of L D Landau has been inserted.
Download or read book An Introduction to the Calculus of Variations written by L.A. Pars and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clear, rigorous introductory treatment covers applications to geometry, dynamics, and physics. It focuses upon problems with one independent variable, connecting abstract theory with its use in concrete problems. 1962 edition.
Download or read book Jacobi s Lectures on Dynamics written by A. Clebsch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-08-15 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The name of C. G. J. Jacobi is familiar to every student of mathematics, thanks to the Jacobion determinant, the Hamilton-Jacobi equations in dynamics, and the Jacobi identity for vector fields. Best known for his contributions to the theory of elliptic and abelian functions, Jacobi is also known for his innovative teaching methods and for running the first research seminar in pure mathematics. A record of his lectures on Dynamics given in 1842-43 at Konigsberg, edited by A. Clebsch, has been available in the original German. This is an English translation. It is not just a historical document; the modern reader can learn much about the subject directly from one of its great masters.
Download or read book The Variational Principles of Mechanics written by Lánczos Kornél and published by . This book was released on 1952 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics second edition written by Gerald Jay Sussman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-02-06 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new edition of a classic text that concentrates on developing general methods for studying the behavior of classical systems, with extensive use of computation. We now know that there is much more to classical mechanics than previously suspected. Derivations of the equations of motion, the focus of traditional presentations of mechanics, are just the beginning. This innovative textbook, now in its second edition, concentrates on developing general methods for studying the behavior of classical systems, whether or not they have a symbolic solution. It focuses on the phenomenon of motion and makes extensive use of computer simulation in its explorations of the topic. It weaves recent discoveries in nonlinear dynamics throughout the text, rather than presenting them as an afterthought. Explorations of phenomena such as the transition to chaos, nonlinear resonances, and resonance overlap to help the student develop appropriate analytic tools for understanding. The book uses computation to constrain notation, to capture and formalize methods, and for simulation and symbolic analysis. The requirement that the computer be able to interpret any expression provides the student with strict and immediate feedback about whether an expression is correctly formulated. This second edition has been updated throughout, with revisions that reflect insights gained by the authors from using the text every year at MIT. In addition, because of substantial software improvements, this edition provides algebraic proofs of more generality than those in the previous edition; this improvement permeates the new edition.
