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Read more about Mechanics and Relativity

Mechanics and Relativity

(1 review)

Timon Idema

Copyright Year: 2018

Publisher: TU Delft Open

Language: English

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Reviewed by Sean Moroney, Lecturer, Windward Community College on 4/23/21

The author presents Classical Mechanics in the first 9 chapters and Special Relativity Theory in the last 6 chapters. The section on Classical Mechanics is quite comprehensive; it touches on all the introductory topics that are generally... read more

Table of Contents

  • Chapter 1: Introduction to classical mechanics
  • Chapter 2: Forces
  • Chapter 3: Energy
  • Chapter 4: Momentum
  • Chapter 5: Rotational motion, torque and angular momentum
  • Chapter 6: General planar motion
  • Chapter 7: General rotational motion
  • Chapter 8: Oscillations
  • Chapter 9: Waves
  • Chapter 10: Einstein's postulates
  • Chapter 11: Lorentz transformations
  • Chapter 12: Spacetime diagrams
  • Chapter 13: Position, energy and momentum in special relativity
  • Chapter 14: Relativistic collisions
  • Chapter 15: Relativistic forces and waves

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About the Book

In Mechanics and Relativity, the reader is taken on a tour through time and space. Starting from the basic axioms formulated by Newton and Einstein, the theory of motion at both the everyday and the highly relativistic level is developed without the need of prior knowledge. The relevant mathematics is provided in an appendix. The text contains various worked examples and a large number of original problems to help the reader develop an intuition for the physics. Applications covered in the book span a wide range of physical phenomena, including rocket motion, spinning tennis rackets and high-energy particle collisions.

About the Contributors

Author

Dr. T. (Timon) Idema is an associate professor at the Department of Bionanoscience at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in The Netherlands. Before starting his research group in Delft in 2012, Idema obtained his PhD in theoretical biophysics at Leiden University (The Netherlands) and worked at the Institut Curie (Paris, France) and the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA). Idema’s group studies collective dynamics in biologically motivated systems, ranging from proteins at the nano scale to tissues and even populations at the micro- and macro scale. A theorist himself, Idema frequently collaborates and co-publishes with experimental groups. He also teaches a number of courses at TU Delft, ranging from introductory physics to courses on soft matter and geometry that take students to the cutting edge of current research. For more details on his group’s research and teaching activities, visit their website at idemalab.tudelft.nl.

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