Ref.

This is probably the best beginner textbook covering the topic of special relativity with many applications. The best thing about this book is that it gives precise instructions on drawing the space-time diagram. In addition, this book encompasses great exercise problems on special relativity with a link to electromagnetism. I am aware that the book is present in DISAT library, but it is not easily accessible to undergraduate students.

s260250 AT studenti DOT polito DOT it

Ref.

Usually, engineering students know nothing about analytical mechanics except for a few students who decide to take analytical mechanics courses. The mainstream textbooks taught physics from a Newtonian approach, using mostly vectors and potentials. When the students encounter Lagrangians and Hamiltonians they usually don’t understand the intricate mathematical foundations behind them. Unfortunately, many aspects of interesting theoretical physics are forbidden for engineering students: phase and configuration space, Noether’s theorem, Poincare’s methods, relativistic equations, Feynman’s quantum-mechanical interpretation of the principle of least action, and so on. There are several interesting features of this book. It explains the differences between variation and differentiation, something that most books on the subject leapfrog. It explains clearly the D’Alembert Principle and the Principle of Virtual Work (Often omitted at the undergraduate level). From those principles the author derives the Principle of Least Action (Hamiltonian Principle), using just elemental calculus. Then he introduces the reader to Legendre’s transformation and the relations between the two fundamental quantities of analytical mechanics: Lagrangian and Hamiltonian. In addition, equations of movement corresponding to those quantities: Euler-Lagrange (Lagrangian) and canonical (Hamiltonian) equations, a powerful insight into configuration and phase spaces, including the wonderful Liouville’s theorem, and
the analogies between optics and mechanics (Snell’s law) when he explains the Hamilton-Jabobi equations.

I can say that this is a defacto compendium of variational principles that we engineers take for granted despite its intricate nature. Of course, I don’t think there are going to be that many students at Politecnico who are going to be interested in reading this kind of somewhat pedantic subject. But who knows? One that the student who reads this might save humanity.

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Ref.

Although this is the standard graduate-level or advanced undergraduate mathematics textbook designed for physicists, it is also suitable for engineers. This book explains the rudimentary concepts of tensor analysis in a no-nonsense way better than any other textbook. I know there are older editions of this book, but I couldn’t borrow it because the copy was severely damaged.

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Testo di grande itneresse per una ricerca in corso. Dall’abstract: “The book examines the unique role of European military engineers in the service of both kingdoms and republics from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth century […]. They were active in European sovereignties from Lisbon to Istanbul, and also in the fortified port enclaves and dominions acquired by their employers overseas […]. With the evolution of civilian professions such as civil engineering and pressure to specialise as combat engineers, they finally narrowed their scope, leading to underestimation of their wider earlier significance”.
Penso possa essere di interesse per entrambe le Biblioteche Centrali.

martino DOT pavignano AT polito DOT it

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This is a rare book on a rare topic: it is about ‘action’ and the Principle of Least Action. A surprisingly well-kept secret, these ideas are at the heart of physical science and engineering. Physics is well known as being concerned with grand conservatory principles (e.g. the conservation of energy) but equally important is the optimization principle (such as getting somewhere in the shortest time or with the least resistance). The book explains: why an optimization principle underlies physics, what action is, what `the Hamiltonian’ is, and how new insights into energy, space, and time arise. It assumes some background in the physical sciences, at the level of undergraduate science, but it is not a textbook. The requisite derivations and worked examples are given but may be skim-read if desired. The author draws from Cornelius Lanczos’s book “The Variational Principles of Mechanics” (1949 and 1970). Lanczos was a brilliant mathematician and educator, but his book was for a postgraduate audience. The present book is no mere copy with the difficult bits left out – it is original, and a popularization. It aims to explain ideas rather than achieve technical competence, and to show how Least Action leads into the whole of physics.

s260250 AT studenti DOT polito DOT it

Ref.

This is a rare book on a rare topic: it is about ‘action’ and the Principle of Least Action. A surprisingly well-kept secret, these ideas are at the heart of physical science and engineering. Physics is well known as being concerned with grand conservatory principles (e.g. the conservation of energy) but equally important is the optimization principle (such as getting somewhere in the shortest time or with the least resistance). The book explains: why an optimization principle underlies physics, what action is, what `the Hamiltonian’ is, and how new insights into energy, space, and time arise. It assumes some background in the physical sciences, at the level of undergraduate science, but it is not a textbook. The requisite derivations and worked examples are given but may be skim-read if desired. The author draws from Cornelius Lanczos’s book “The Variational Principles of Mechanics” (1949 and 1970). Lanczos was a brilliant mathematician and educator, but his book was for a postgraduate audience. The present book is no mere copy with the difficult bits left out – it is original, and a popularization. It aims to explain ideas rather than achieve technical competence, and to show how Least Action leads into the whole of physics.

s260250 AT studenti DOT polito DOT it

Ref.

This is a rare book on a rare topic: it is about ‘action’ and the Principle of Least Action. A surprisingly well-kept secret, these ideas are at the heart of physical science and engineering. Physics is well known as being concerned with grand conservatory principles (e.g. the conservation of energy) but equally important is the optimization principle (such as getting somewhere in the shortest time or with the least resistance). The book explains: why an optimization principle underlies physics, what action is, what `the Hamiltonian’ is, and how new insights into energy, space, and time arise. It assumes some background in the physical sciences, at the level of undergraduate science, but it is not a textbook. The requisite derivations and worked examples are given but may be skim-read if desired. The author draws from Cornelius Lanczos’s book “The Variational Principles of Mechanics” (1949 and 1970). Lanczos was a brilliant mathematician and educator, but his book was for a postgraduate audience. The present book is no mere copy with the difficult bits left out – it is original, and a popularization. It aims to explain ideas rather than achieve technical competence, and to show how Least Action leads into the whole of physics.

s260250 AT studenti DOT polito DOT it

Ref.

This is a rare book on a rare topic: it is about ‘action’ and the Principle of Least Action. A surprisingly well-kept secret, these ideas are at the heart of physical science and engineering. Physics is well known as being concerned with grand conservatory principles (e.g. the conservation of energy) but equally important is the optimization principle (such as getting somewhere in the shortest time or with the least resistance). The book explains: why an optimization principle underlies physics, what action is, what `the Hamiltonian’ is, and how new insights into energy, space, and time arise. It assumes some background in the physical sciences, at the level of undergraduate science, but it is not a textbook. The requisite derivations and worked examples are given but may be skim-read if desired. The author draws from Cornelius Lanczos’s book “The Variational Principles of Mechanics” (1949 and 1970). Lanczos was a brilliant mathematician and educator, but his book was for a postgraduate audience. The present book is no mere copy with the difficult bits left out – it is original, and a popularization. It aims to explain ideas rather than achieve technical competence, and to show how Least Action leads into the whole of physics.

s260250 AT studenti DOT polito DOT it

Ref.

This is a rare book on a rare topic: it is about ‘action’ and the Principle of Least Action. A surprisingly well-kept secret, these ideas are at the heart of physical science and engineering. Physics is well known as being concerned with grand conservatory principles (e.g. the conservation of energy) but equally important is the optimization principle (such as getting somewhere in the shortest time or with the least resistance). The book explains: why an optimization principle underlies physics, what action is, what `the Hamiltonian’ is, and how new insights into energy, space, and time arise. It assumes some background in the physical sciences, at the level of undergraduate science, but it is not a textbook. The requisite derivations and worked examples are given but may be skim-read if desired. The author draws from Cornelius Lanczos’s book “The Variational Principles of Mechanics” (1949 and 1970). Lanczos was a brilliant mathematician and educator, but his book was for a postgraduate audience. The present book is no mere copy with the difficult bits left out – it is original, and a popularization. It aims to explain ideas rather than achieve technical competence, and to show how Least Action leads into the whole of physics.

s260250 AT studenti DOT polito DOT it

Ref.

Richard Feynman is an American physicist who is famous in a number of dimensions. To scientists, he is a giant of 20th-century physics and a pioneer of quantum electrodynamics (QED). To the public, he is a refreshing character that went against the typical stereotype of physicists. To physics students, he was an exceptionally excellent teacher, both for his charisma and his uncanny ability to make complicated topics feel natural and intuitive. Although many of the lectures he gave at Caltech are immortalized in his three-volume series “The Feynman Lectures on Physics.” Unfortunately, not all of the lectures he gave made it to this series. In particular, a guest lecture given on March 13, 1964, entitled “The Motion of Planets around the Sun” was lost because it was somehow buried in the office of one of Feynman’s colleagues. The lecture notes were later found and restored by Caltech physicist David L. Goodstein and his wife, who worked at Caltech as an archivist. Eventually, it was published in a book titled “Feynman’s Lost Lecture,” which contains both the lecture itself and the surrounding stories in a beautiful way. The lecture mainly tries to answer the question “Why are orbits elliptic?” There is an analytical solution involving pedantic mathematical formulas, but Feynman did something special by providing a very elementary approach to answering the question. It would be a nice supplement for some students taking Physics I course since Physics I never really answers the cause of the elliptic orbits of planets.

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