PHY 6246 - Fall 2010 - CLASSICAL MECHANICS

FALL 2010

INSTRUCTOR

Pierre Sikivie
Office: NPB 2063
email: sikivie@phys.ufl.edu
tel: 352.392.1923

CLASS TIMES

MWF, 9:35 - 10:25am, in NPB 1101

OFFICE HOURS

MWF, 10:40 - 11:30am, in NPB 2063

TEXTBOOK:

`Classical Mechanics' (3d edition) by H. Goldstein, C. Poole and J. Safko, Addison Wesley 2002.

COURSE OUTLINE

Introduction, principle of least action, constraints, Noether's theorem, Galilean invariance, the Kepler problem, scattering, the virial theorem, free, forced and damped oscillations, small oscillations of a molecule, parametric resonance, the rotation group in 3 dimensions, equations of motion of rigid bodies, Hamilton's equations, Poisson brackets, canonical transformations, Liouville's theorem, the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, adiabatic invariants, the mechanics of continuous media.

HOMEWORK DUE DATES

September 1 1.5, 1.8, 1.12, 1.15
September 8 1.9, 1.10, 1.19, 1.22
September 15 2.6, 2.13, 2.14, 2.16
September 22: 2.18, 2.19, 2.20, 3.13
October 6: 3.16, 3.20, 3.25, 3.27
October 13: 3.28, 3.30, 3.31, 3.32
October 20: 6.1, 6.4, 6.5, 6.16
October 27: 6.6.a, 6.8, 6.9
November 3: 4.9, 4.10, 4.15, 4. 17. 4.18
November 10: 4.20, 4.21, 4.22, 4.23
November 17: 5.17, 5.18. 5.19. 5.23
November 24: 5.7, 5.11, 5.24, 5.25
December 1: 8.2, 8.16, 8.27, 9.6, 9.23
December 8: 9.28, 10.5, 10.13, 10.17, 10.20

GRADING

The final grade will be based on homework (25%), a mid-term test (25%) on October 18, and the final exam (50%) on December 17.