Intro to CM : With Problems and Solutions - David Morin 🌟#

Introductory Ideal for Beginners

As the title says, it’s an introductory book with problems and solutions. For a first course, I’d do Chapters 1 to 5 and 7 to 9. The book has TONS and TONS of good problems, all followed by solutions. Here’s the strategy that worked for me:

1. Read a section or chapter (depending on its size, of course).
2. Go back and reread the examples until you’re confident you can solve them solo.
3. If some steps still baffle you, chances are a particular concept needs a little more love. So, backtrack and reread those paragraphs or sections.
4. Then solve 3-5 problems of various difficulties, without looking at the solutions.
5. Then try 2-3 medium-high difficulty problems. Sketch a solution plan in your head first and check whether it matches the solution. In my opinion, Morin’s book has everything you need for an introductory course in CM, from free-body diagrams and circular motion to damped and driven oscillations, plus lots of problems on conservation laws and angular momentum. The only other thing I’d use alongside it is David Tong’s notes (as always), linked below.

Classical Mechanics - David Tong 💫#

Intermediate State-of-the-art

The reason I place this text at the intermediate level is simple: if you have never taken a formal course in classical mechanics, some of the concepts David Tong presents may not seem immediately obvious. (Though, if anyone can make them feel intuitive and inevitable, it is Tong.) The examples in Morin, on the other hand, build a good foundation in classical mechanics, whatever you end up specializing in.

However, if you want to be a theoretical physicist, Tong is a must-read. It has a lot more material than one semester, easily a year-long course (I believe that holds even at Cambridge, where these lecture notes come from; they were later turned into a book).

Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems - Marion, Thornton#

Intermediate

This book is a real gem. Unfortunately, I didn’t stumble upon it until a year or two into my bachelor’s. Eventually, I started using it as a reference whenever I needed to brush up on some topics. It’s still my go-to book whenever I need to recall certain concepts. I find the mathematical rigor in this book more sophisticated than in Morin’s. This can be super helpful when you need to quickly skim over topics you already know but might have forgotten some details. Sometimes, a glance at a mathematically precise equation or law can be more powerful than a whole paragraph explaining it (of course, only if you’ve already delved into the topic in detail).

Let’s say you’re tackling “Theoretical Physics I” (TPI) in Germany, which is all about Classical mechanics. I’d strongly recommend using this book alongside Morin because its mathematical rigor outshines Morin in certain areas (and TPI is all about that math rigor and a solid understanding of CM) - An alternative is to look into Tong’s book now.

Outside of Germany, it’s not a guarantee that your first CM course will cover Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics (though it can happen). If it does, this is the book you want to crack open. The author covers the Calculus of Variations in the most gentle way possible – it’s a slow, steady, and highly effective approach. The whole book is fantastic, but the parts on Calculus of Variations, Lagrangian, and Hamiltonian mechanics are especially good (Again, Tong is also really good at it)

Oh, and the chapter on special relativity is short and gives a lot of intuition. Trust me, it’s worth having this book. (And one last time, Tong does a brilliant job here too.. Sigh Tong is eating the Physics Textbook market)

Classical Mechanics - Goldstein#

Advanced State-of-the-art

Mechanics - Landau and Lifschitz#

Advanced Old-is-gold