Course Description

This course covers Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics, systems with constraints, rigid body dynamics, vibrations, central forces, Hamilton-Jacobi theory, action-angle variables, perturbation theory, and continuous systems. It provides an introduction to ideal and viscous fluid mechanics, including turbulence, as well as an introduction to nonlinear dynamics, including chaos.

Course Objective

This course has grown out of the first course in Physics taught to engineering students at IIT-Madras. However, the contents are expanded to include the interests of students of basic sciences and a strong emphasis on the foundations of classical mechanics is aimed at.