Handbook

Classical mechanics is the study of the motion of objects obeying Newton’s laws of motion, while Einstein’s special theory of relativity revises the Galilean notion of relativity between inertial frames. This course will provide students with strong grounding in the fundamentals of these concepts through a series of lectures, tutorials and hands-on laboratory work. This will pave the way for advanced topics in electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics later in their studies.
Topics to be covered include: Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of mechanics; variational principles; Noether’s theorem, symmetry and conservation laws; damped and forced harmonic oscillators; resonance phenomena; coupled oscillators and normal modes; foundations of special relativity, 4-formalism, Lorentz transformations; space-time diagrams; relativistic kinematics and dynamics; relativistic Doppler effect.