Perfect Form : Variational Principles, Methods, and Applications in Elementary Physics - Don S. Lemons

Perfect Form

Variational Principles, Methods, and Applications in Elementary Physics

By: Don S. Lemons

Paperback | 3 June 1997

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $99.99

$67.75

32%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $16.94 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 5 to 10 business days

What does the path taken by a ray of light share with the trajectory of a thrown baseball and the curve of a wheat stalk bending in the breeze? Each is the subject of a different study yet all are optimal shapes; light rays minimize travel time while a thrown baseball minimizes action. All natural curves and shapes, and many artificial ones, manifest such "perfect form" because physical principles can be expressed as a statement requiring some important physical quantity to be mathematically maximum, minimum, or stationary. Perfect Form introduces the basic "variational" principles of classical physics (least time, least potential energy, least action, and Hamilton's principle), develops the mathematical language most suited to their application (the calculus of variations), and presents applications from the physics usually encountered in introductory course sequences.

The text gradually unfolds the physics and mathematics. While other treatments postulate Hamilton's principle and deduce all results from it, Perfect Form begins with the most plausible and restricted variational principles and develops more powerful ones through generalization. One selection of text and problems even constitutes a non-calculus of variations introduction to variational methods, while the mathematics more generally employed extends only to solving simple ordinary differential equations. Perfect Form is designed to supplement existing classical mechanics texts and to present variational principles and methods to students who approach the subject for the first time.

Industry Reviews
"[The] ability of variational methods to derive fundamental results in physics hints at their being a kind of short cut towards truly fundamental insights into the design of the cosmos... Don Lemon's short book is aimed at bringing these techniques within reach of the average undergraduate physics student."--Robert Matthews, New Scientist

More in Plasma Physics

Rogue Waves in Integrable Systems - Bo Yang
Chirality and Wobbling in Atomic Nuclei - Costel Marian Petrache
Applications of Accelerators in the Quantum Technology Era - David Jamieson
Quantum Mechanics - Alastair I. M. Rae

RRP $120.00

$101.25

16%
OFF
Physical Kinetics : Volume 10 - L. P. Pitaevskii
Transport Phenomena Fundamentals : 4th Edition - Joel L. Plawsky

RRP $284.00

$224.50

21%
OFF
Plasma Gasification and Pyrolysis - Milan Hrabovsky

RRP $96.99

$75.50

22%
OFF
Laser-Matter Interaction for Radiation and Energy - Hitendra K. Malik
Fundamentals of Plasma Physics - J. A. Bittencourt