David MacKay: Dynamics: Lecture notes

Dynamics

Part IB Advanced Physics Course

Course Synopsis

Lecture notes «

Exercises

· Solutions

· More Physics Fun

Further information

· History of Dynamics

· Precession of the earth

· Planetary dynamics

· Harrison's clocks

· Anecdotes

· Gravitational Slingshot

· Voyager

· Lagrange Points

· Rigid bodies

Administrative stuff

· Typos in the textbook

· Finding the textbook

· Software

For supervisors

2000 Lecture notes

· Part III revision

Any questions?

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1B Dynamics

Lecture notes for 2001

A small number of handouts are distributed in lectures. Those, and my scanned lecture notes, are below.

lecture notes handouts and other useful stuff

Lecture 1: The Energy Method.

Lecture 2: Dimensional Analysis Handout 2: Dimensional analysis (html) / (postscript) | (pdf) |

Lecture 3: Newtonian Dynamics Revision Handout 3: Newtonian Dynamics Revision (postscript) | (pdf) |

Lecture 3-4: Extensions of the energy method Planetary assignment
Handout 4: Almost Inverse-square force-law orbits (postscript) | pdf | old Handwritten version |

Lecture 5: Perturbation Expansions, State space diagrams + Lagrangian Dynamics. State space diagram of pendulum

Lecture 6: Perturbation expansions + Lagrangian Dynamics, continued.

Lecture 7: Pendulums, Lagrangian Dynamics, and the Hamiltonian.

Lecture 8: Hamiltonian Dynamics. Bead dynamics from the Hamiltonian

Handout 5: Hamiltonian dynamics summary and example (postscript) | pdf | Liouville's theorem for vertically bouncing balls |

Lecture 9: Normal Modes I . Handout 6: Drag force by dimensional analysis (postscript) | pdf |
About surface tension and latent heat

Molecule modes: Quicktime Movie by Luca Turin (more info)

Lecture 10: Normal Modes II .

Handouts 7a & 7: Normal modes - 7a (postscript, 2 pages) | pdf | 7 (postscript, 8 pages) | pdf |

Lecture 11: Normal Modes III .

Lecture 12: Normal Modes IV . Symmetries and eigenvectors - the complex wave (corkscrew) is an eigenvector of the translation operator

Lecture 13: Elasticity . | Beats |
Handout 8 contains the following sections:
1: | Strain and stress - postscript | | pdf |
2: | Kepler's Ellipses, and gravitational slingshots (postscript) | pdf | orbit diagram |
3: | Rotating frames (postscript) | pdf |
4: | Optional reading - Inverted pendulum | pdf |

Lecture 14: Kepler and orbits . | Marimba | History of planetary observations | Orbits in inverse-square potential |

Lecture 15: Fictitious forces in rotating frames .

Lecture 16: Rigid bodies . (A subset of these notes were used in the 2001 lecture 16)

David J.C. MacKay

Site last modified Wed Aug 17 16:39:36 BST 2005