Classical Dynamics: A Contemporary Approach

Not for the faint at heart. This books uses it all, tensor's, the form's approach and more. This book really is for a post-doc. It does all the background things that most books use smoke and mirror's to do. If the word tensor or one-form's scare you or never heard of, forget this book. This book is not for anyone at, at least the post-doc. level. If you can understand the book 'Geometrical method's of mathematical physics', by Schultz and can understand it then go for it. I would call this book not even at the level of a grad. student but someone who is in their last year of getting a PhD. Sorry, it is true. If you can understand this book, "How much you will have advanced." When you can read this book you can call yourself a Physicist. You can get here but it takes time and a lot of coursework to get here.

This book is a very nice work on classical mechanics. The part of non-dynamical systems is well discussed and exemplified. In addition, the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms are well posed and discussed with good exercises. Nice book to have as a reference.

Very happy, the book came on-time.

Mediocre classical dynamics book compared to Classical Dynamics by Merriam and Thronton.Goldstein is an alternative but is not written as well.

Goldstein, Taylor, Landau, and V.I. Arnol'd pale in comparison to this fascinating text that actually tells the STORY of what physics is attempting to do. I feel all to often Bertrand's Theorem is accredited to Goldstein, yet I feel the reasoning and proof of this astounding truth is handled wonderfully in this text. The prose is wonderfully clear and the math is wonderfully utilized. No other text will inspire as much as this text. By far the best part of this text is it serves two purposes. For the educated reader, it can serve as almost a nonfiction popular text to be able to understand the highest level concepts of physics. For the dedicated student, the problems serve as the most advanced stepping stone to becoming an amazing problem solving machine. I feel remorse that in todays education this text is not the standard graduate level text, yet I believe in due time we will see Saleten and Jose become the new Goldstein/Taylor of any classical mechanics course. If this is a reference text to any course you are taking I highly recommend the purchase. The derivations will give you far more insight to the motivations and process to this art of physics. If you are a double major in physic and math I recommend to better half way point between the analysis course you have taken and the reasoning you love of physics. Arnol'd and Landau is more suitable for the more math rigorous student. Taylor and Goldstein is best for one who wishes to utilize only as high as vector calc for lengthy derivations. But what about the students that lie in the limbo of right in between math rigor and physical reasoning? This is your text! You will see no black squares at the end of proofs (much like David Hilbert's novels on geometry), yet if read slowly you will have the arms to explain the arguments to laymen. In contemporary days we are at a disconnect of math text and physics text. You can spend two years proving problems in analysis related to differential manifolds, lie algebras, harmonic analysis, and convergence in a graduate mathematics degree. But until you see these concepts grow naturally from fairly simple questions about how things move you, will not understand the implications beyond connecting definition and discovering fancy algebra tricks. Beware readers, this text may change your entire academic goal set.P.S.The greatest problems in this book are between the lines of this book. There are key steps left out of derivation only because they would take up a lot of space and are just math muscle exercises. But if you do calculate these awful integrals and you do take these nasty derivatives you will beable to tackle any problem in the book. The best part is, you will WANT to calculate these steps as the writing will draw you up in the narrative to truly prove it.

The book is fantastic, but the printing seems lower than average quality. The words in my book appear dull in the same way as when a printer is about to run out of ink.

If this book is not required for your course, do not waste your money on it. Though it covers more than Goldstein, it does so quite poorly. You will learn more from two pages in Goldstein than an entire chapter in this book. The writing is unclear and the coverage of topology is so scant that its appearance is more of a hinderance to understanding than an aid. Furthermore, the book was so poorly bound that it started to fall apart one semester into the course.

Classical mechanics often falls by the wayside in a modern physics curriculum. However, there are times when an understanding of subtle issues in this field are simply necessary for progress in current research directions. At times like these, one is all-too-often forced to turn to older texts such as Goldstein or directly to the literature of a field with which one is rarely intimately familiar. It is therefore a great pleasure to find a text such as Jose and Saletan's, a highly modern, extremely complete and very readable textbook on mechanics at an advanced level.The book covers all of the standard topics of a graduate mechanics course (Lagrangian and Hamiltonian dynamics, rigid bodies, etc.) as well as more modern topics such as chaotic dynamics. All these subjects are treated in great detail and both in very physical and very formal languages. Most importantly, all of these discussions (including the formal ones!) are packed with completely worked examples which allow one to begin to use these techniques without attempting to decipher formal proofs.The breadth of topics covered and the quality of the writing make this book a valuable addition to any physicist's workbench.

Book contents is good, it is one of the source books I use to teach Classical Mechanics at the graduate level. However, I give it a one star because, as the photo shows, it started to fall apart after about a week of use.

Un enfoque moderno y completísimo de la mecánica clásica. Todo detallado. Muchos ejemplos. Muy recomendable, tanto para un primer contacto con la asignatura como para profundizar en temas específicos.

I think that any physicists (should) know(s) the book by H.Goldstein "Classical Mechanics" which is one of best textbook ever written.Well, "Classical Dynamics: A Contemporary Approach " is, in my opinion, an excellent updated version of the book by Goldstein.It contains new topics like non-linear dynamics, and a final chapter, about continuum dynamics, including classical field theoryand fluid dynamics, both discussed from a modern perspective. You will find discussion about solitons and spinors, sine-Gordonand KdV equations, and much, much more. Each chapter offers several Worked Examples and many homeworks.This a "real" textbook and one can learn a lot from it.

Nada más abrir el libro se puede ver la mala calidad de la impresión: hojas finas, tinta borrosa y textos que parecen básicamente fotos.El contenido del libro es el esperado, la mala reseña es solo por la poquísima calidad respecto de la esperada de un libro que vale 80€. No recomiendo su compra desde aquí.