Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics
by Gerald Jay Sussman, Jack Widsom · first published 2001
46% recommend52% neutral2% critical
Why HN recommends it
Teaches Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics by writing Scheme programs, with precise notation that exposes ambiguities in the traditional Euler-Lagrange equations. Suits programmers who've read SICP and want physics.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
This textbook takes an innovative approach to the teaching of classical mechanics, emphasizing the development of general but practical intellectual tools to support the analysis of nonlinear Hamiltonian systems. The development is organized around a progressively more sophisticated analysis of particular natural systems and weaves examples throughout the presentation. Explorations of phenomena such as transitions to chaos, nonlinear resonances, and resonance overlap to help the student to develop appropriate analytic tools for understanding. Computational algorithms communicate methods used i
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Computer Algebra is criminally underused - it has the potential to make math-heavy critical-path code a lot more clear, testable, observable and bug-free by design. I feel I need to mention "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics" by Wisdom and Sussman, and the accompanying "scmutils" library, which first implemented in Scheme many of the same features, although this Julia library seems to be more complete. There's also a great…
on “Symbolics.jl: A Modern Computer Algebra System for a Modern Language” ↗Similar in spirit (but not so introductory and specific to mechanics): Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics, by Sussman and Wisdom. Whole book available online here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/... . (SICM uses Scheme -- of course! -- where this course uses Haskell. SICM is…
on “Intro to Computational Physics” ↗My favorite example of this sort of thing is in the preface of Sussman and Abelson's "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics": https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/... "Classical mechanics is deceptively simple. It is surprisingly easy to get the right answer with fallacious reasoning or without real…
on “Controversies in field of mathematics” ↗…Many of the physics books I've read over the years (though now a hacker I be, I started as a scientist... still am at heart). Not one in particular, except maybe Modern Quantum Mechanics by Sakurai, and Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics by Sussman & Wisdom The Lord of the Rings trilogy Role-playing game manuals, especially D&D 2nd edition (just the current edition at the time, when I was a kid) You know, just making this list reminds…
on “Books That Changed My Life” ↗I've also been self-studying physics recently. Here are the books that I settled on as providing a good introduction to classical mechanics: Classical Mechanics - John R Taylor Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics - Sussman & Wisdom https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/structure-and-interpretation-... The Theoretical Minimum - Susskind https://theoreticalminimum.com/ Introduction to Classical Mechanics - David J Morin
on “Ask HN: How to self-study physics?” ↗You might like Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics by Sussman and Wisdom. It does classical mechanics using an MIT-Scheme library. Lean/mathlib is a mix of functional programming and classical math notation. The community likes unicode quite a lot, with…
on “Mathematical Notation, Past and Future (2000)” ↗…exponentiation) or both (matrix multiplication). Even with all of this modern mathematical notation is full of ambiguities. A great short discussion about this is in the preface to Sussman and Wisdom's _Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics_: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/... which despite being all about "mathematical expressions" somehow manages to have all of its code in Lisp... I also recommend reading…
on “What is Symbolic Computation?” ↗To be fair, when you actually look at Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (which is a great book), it's still math that a physicist recognizes, not so much an ALGOL-esque program. The Scheme system was extended to handle the math rather than the math brought to the language.…
on “Translating math into code with examples in Java, Racket, Haskell, Python (2011)” ↗…databases — using category theory, a branch of mathematics that has revolutionized several areas of computer science. https://www.categoricaldata.net/ Thinking about physics math in computer language: "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics" by Gerald Jay Sussman and Jack Wisdom with Meinhard E. Mayer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_o...
on “Think in Math, Write in Code” ↗…we’re just used to. There’s lots of discussion of this around, including previous HN threads. But if you want a really good example, check out Sussman et al. discussing the Euler Lagrange equations in Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics. Actually here you go, they repeat the same discussion in the preface of this free book: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t3si4b99ijqyhyk/9580.pdf?dl=1
on “Cormac McCarthy on how to write a science paper” ↗If you liked this... https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/... "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics" by Gerald Jay Sussman and Jack Wisdom > There has been a remarkable revival of interest in classical mechanics in recent years. We now know that there is much more to classical mechanics than previously…
on “Math Symbols Explained with Python” ↗In mechanical engineering: - Mechanical Engineering Design, Shigley - Mechanism and Mechanical Devices Sourcebook, Sclater - Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy, Moore - Machinery's Handbook - Structure and Interpretation of... Classical Mechanics, Sussman And just for fun: - 507 Mechanical Movements, Brown - Handbook of Compliant Mechanisms, Howell
on “Ask HN: What, in your opinion, are the greatest and most useful textbooks?” ↗…https://staff.fnwi.uva.nl/d.j.n.vaneijck2/HR/ - The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming - Uses Haskell, as the title suggests https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/b... - The Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics - Uses Scheme
on “Learn Physics with Functional Programming” ↗I don't know, but whenever I plead with people in computational science to read Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics I'm usually met with an eye-roll.
on “GNU Octave” ↗“Structure and interpretation of classical mechanics” by Sussman bridges this gap beautifully
on “Ask HN: What is the best way to get into Physics as a coder?” ↗