Classical Mechanics Lecture Notes
Preface
This is a set of lecture notes for undegraduate classical mechanics, in particular for the classes PHYS 2210, “Classical Mechanics and Math Methods I”, and PHYS 3210, “Classical Mechanics and Math Methods II”, taught at the University of Colorado Boulder. The division between semester is typically as shown in the index.
The PHYS 3210 notes are in a very unpolished stage; they are derived from a set of notes that were scrambled a bit due a sudden mid-pandemic teaching style shift. They are very rough until I go through them more carefully and remove this warning!
These are draft lecture notes, and are subject to change. 100% correctness is not guaranteed! E-mails about typos, broken links, or any other issues are always welcome.
These notes are authored using Quarto. To learn more about Quarto, visit https://quarto.org/.
I generally try to keep things self-contained in these notes, but they are still lecture notes and not as thorough as an actual textbook. The recommended textbook of choice is Taylor (2005).
Throughout these notes, a blue box like this one contains an exercise. Click on the “Answer” box below to expand it!
Answer:
This is where the answer would be hidden, for a real exercise!A green box contains a worked example that is meant to illustrate how to approach certain types of physics or math problems.
A red box is used to highlight key concepts or equations that are especially important!
An orange box contains a warning regarding a common mistake, tricky concept, or someplace where the textbook presents things very differently.
Finally, a yellow box contains an aside - a brief discussion of a related topic that is not crucial to the main discussion. These are collapsed by default, so click on them if you’re interested!