From the Bookshelf of Science and Inquiry…

The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics (Theoretical Minimum #1)

Leonard Susskind,

George Hrabovsky

Discussion: Book Club 2015

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 25 topics — 669 comments total

Book Club 2015

* December 2015 - Violinist's Thumb
By Betsy , co-mod · 32 posts · 87 views

last updated Jan 11, 2016 06:55AM

* November 2015 - Being Mortal
By Betsy , co-mod · 55 posts · 111 views

last updated Jun 25, 2016 03:15PM

showing 1 of 1 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Dec 03, 2018 Tomislav rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science, mathematics

In physics, I have found the word “classical” to be relative. While the entire content of this book is classical mechanics, that would mean everything before quantum mechanics and relativity. What I previously thought of as classical mechanics was what I had learned in engineering school many years ago - as done with that sort of calculus devised by Leibniz and Newton. However, that is preparatory, and before quantum mechanics, there is a necessary recasting of physical principles into Lagrangia In physics, I have found the word “classical” to be relative. While the entire content of this book is classical mechanics, that would mean everything before quantum mechanics and relativity. What I previously thought of as classical mechanics was what I had learned in engineering school many years ago - as done with that sort of calculus devised by Leibniz and Newton. However, that is preparatory, and before quantum mechanics, there is a necessary recasting of physical principles into Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics. So, the first half of the book was review as I expected – but the second half was new and more challenging. There have been two follow-up Theoretical Minimum books since this was published – Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum, and Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory: The Theoretical Minimum, which I have not read and for which it is now obvious this is a prerequisite. They are all advertised as learning books, but I found them to be too densely packed for that in the sections that were new for me. I can follow the new material, but retain and use for problem solving? I need a more overtly instructional approach for that.

However, the half that was review for me worked well as a refresher, and I expect the same could be true in the second half for readers further educated than myself in this field. The folksy introductions tell you how to think about what you about to dive into, but were sometimes distracting. There are exercises that are more than practice problems; they develop topics not covered didactically. Read them and solve them! I came to this book, tired of the kind of “physics” books that explain through analogy, and conceptual debates that seem more like belief systems. Refreshing the math has been a pleasant experience, but it takes quite a bit of time – and I have a distance to go before I reach the juicy stuff. I recommend the book to the appropriate audience, but knock it down a bit for the misleading advertising. Here’s the table of contents.

1 The Nature of Classical Physics
2 Motion
3 Dynamics
4 Systems of More Than One Particle
5 Energy
6 The Principle of Least Action
7 Symmetries and Conservation Laws
8 Hamiltonian Mechanics and Time-Translation Invariance
9 The Phase Space Fluid and the Gibbs-Liouville Theorem
10 Poisson Brackets, Angular Momentum, and Symmetries
11 Electric and Magnetic Forces
Appendix 1 Central Forces and Planetary Orbits

There is a companion website for this book at http://www.madscitech.org/tm/, which contains Solutions to Exercises of Lectures 1-6 and Errata for both the 2013 and 2014 editions. The errors in the 2013 edition are extensive, so I recommend the 2014 edition. The PDFs are good enough to determine if this book is something you want to get into, but to best view the CDF solutions, you should download and install the free Wolfram CDF Viewer from http://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/

In addition, you can watch lectures by Leonard Susskind from a related course at Stanford for free at http://www.theoreticalminimum.com/cou.... The first half of the book is covered in just the first two ninety-minute lectures, and then they jump up for remaining eight lectures. ...more

10 likes · Like · see review

Jan 08, 2013 Persephone marked it as to-read