Lectures "Classical mechanics: A critical introduction" has contents: Kinematics - The mathematical description of motion, newton's first and third laws - Statics of particles, newton's second law; dynamics of particles; conservation and non conservation of mo mentum, work and energy, simple harmonic motion,. and other contents. | Classical Mechanics: a Critical Introduction Michael Cohen, Professor Emeritus Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6396 Copyright 2011, 2012 with Solutions Manual by Larry Gladney, . Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty Excellence Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Pennsylvania ”Why, a four-year-old child could understand this. Run out and find me a four-year-old child.” - GROUCHO i REVISED PREFACE (Jan. 2013) Anyone who has taught the “standard” Introductory Mechanics course more than a few times has most likely formed some fairly definite ideas regarding how the basic concepts should be presented, and will have identified (rightly or wrongly) the most common sources of difficulty for the student. An increasing number of people who think seriously about physics pedagogy have questioned the effectiveness of the traditional classroom with the Professor lecturing and the students listening (perhaps). I take no position regarding this question, but assume that a book can still have educational value. The first draft of this book was composed many years ago and was intended to serve either as a stand-alone text or as a supplementary “tutor” for the student. My motivation was the belief that most courses hurry through the basic concepts too quickly, and that a more leisurely discussion would be helpful to many students. I let the project lapse when I found that publishers appeared to be interested mainly in massive textbooks covering all of first-year physics. Now that it is possible to make this material available on the Internet to students at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, I have revived and reworked the project and hope the resulting document may be useful to some readers. I owe special thanks to Professor Larry Gladney, who has translated the text from its antiquated format into modern digital form and is also preparing a manual of solutions to the end-of-chapter .
