Reading assignments

  • (1/22) The material for the next several lectures is contained in Goldstein chapter 4. This chapter is mostly mathematical formalism, some of which should already be familiar to you. We will jump in at section 4.8, and cover the main ideas in a more streamlined way. Please review the material in the earlier parts of the chapter if it is completely new to you. You can skip Euler angles: nobody uses those anymore.
  • (1/29) Goldstein 5.1-5.6. Don't get too attached to the notation in this chapter, which is atrocious (both latin and greek indices for coordinates, latin indices also for particles, ...). The "principal axis transformation" is just the eigen-decomposition of a symmetric matrix you learned in linear algebra.
  • (2/5) Goldstein 1.1-1.3. Except for 1.3 this should be review.
  • (2/25) Goldstein 1.4, 1.6, 2.1-2.2
  • (3/12) Goldstein 2.3-2.4, 2.6