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A comment on Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differential Equations [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differen... by marcosdumay on Monday November 13, 2023 @08:55AM (#38250128)
The problem is that there is no good textbook for Classical Mechanics out there. At least not on an introductory level.

It's funny that for the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th one physicists were so eager to simplify and generalize their knowledge. With the side-effect of learning quite a few surprising things from the work. And yet for almost a century the goal is explicitly the opposite. (It's almost like if Academia is in crisis...)

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Re:Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differen... by mnl on Monday November 13, 2023 @09:12AM (#38250282)
I learnt a lot of physics from Marion's 2nd edition (not SR there though). An older and completely forgotten fine textbook is W. Hauser's Introduction to the Principles of Mechanics. Then you jump into Goldstein (the 1980 one, again not SR there). It's a good idea to buy any Schaum book from Spiegel about this too, also for vector analysis if you can't take a course on that.
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Re:Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differen... by marcosdumay on Monday November 13, 2023 @10:27AM (#38251264)
Yeah, in retrospect, I've set myself for failure with that universal claim.

But the proof of failure is instructive :)

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Re:Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differen... by elteto on Monday November 13, 2023 @12:18PM (#38252593)
Taylor’s is fairly “introductory” and it’s fantastic. Very well written.
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Re:Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differen... by dustingetz on Monday November 13, 2023 @12:50PM (#38252951)
No Bullshit guide to Math and Physics https://minireference.com/

(serious reply, if it's insufficient for a freshman course i propose following up with Feynman https://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed-set/dp..., any objections?)

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Re:Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differen... by jasomill on Tuesday November 14, 2023 @12:49PM (#38266769)
While not exactly "introductory" in terms of mathematical prerequisites, Spivak's Mechanics I[1] is an interesting take on the subject, with extensive historical references if you're in to that sort of thing.

[1] https://archive.org/details/physics-for-mathematicians-mecha...

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