PHYS326-25S1 (C) Semester One 2025

Classical Mechanics and Symmetry Principles

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 17 February 2025
End Date: Sunday, 22 June 2025
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 2 March 2025
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 11 May 2025

Description

The Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics which provide essential preparation for all advanced courses in theoretical physics. Techniques learned have wide use in advanced quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, general relatively, particle physics and statistical mechanics.

Learning Outcomes

In this course students will embark on a voyage of discovery of the deep theoretical principles
that underlie Newtonian and relativistic mechanics, and to appreciate why the laws
of physics are the way they are. They will learn new ways of thinking about the physical
world which allow deeper appreciation of the links between the classical and quantum
regimes.

Armed with the powerful techniques of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian dynamics, and Cartesian
tensors, students will have the tools to simplify complex mechanical problems to their
basic elements. With elegant symmetry principles such as Noether’s theorem they will
understand the deep connection between symmetries of spacetime and conservation laws,
seeing how, for example, Kepler’s second law follows from rotational symmetry and conservation
of angular momentum. They will apply this new understanding to a variety of
physical systems, from coupled oscillators to particles moving in electromagnetic fields.
Finally they will discover how the symmetries of special relativity are most succinctly described
with the language of 4-vectors, and derive the Lorentz group from the Principle of
Relativity.

This course is the basis for all advanced courses in theoretical physics.

OUTLINE
* Dynamical systems – definitions. Constrained systems. Lagrange’s equations.
* Principle of least action. Euler-Lagrange equations.
* Symmetries, conservation laws and Lie groups. Noether’s theorem.
* Oscillations: linearization. The linear chain.
* Hamiltonian formulation. Legendre’s transformation.
* Transformation theory. Canonical transformations. Generating functions. Poisson
brackets.
* Hamilton-Jacobi method. Physical applications: (e.g. wave mechanics and Schr¨odinger’s
equation).
* Special relativity: Kinematics, symmetries and Lagrangian formulation

Prerequisites

(1) PHYS202 or PHYS205; (2) PHYS203; (3) MATH201 RP: MATH202 and MATH203

Recommended Preparation

Timetable 2025

Students must attend one activity from each section.

Lecture A
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Monday 10:00 - 11:00 E14 Lecture Theatre
17 Feb - 6 Apr
28 Apr - 1 Jun
Lecture B
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Tuesday 14:00 - 15:00 A6 Lecture Theatre
17 Feb - 6 Apr
28 Apr - 1 Jun
Drop in Class A
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Friday 13:00 - 14:00 Jack Erskine 446
24 Feb - 30 Mar
5 May - 1 Jun
Tutorial A
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Thursday 15:00 - 16:00 Rehua 528
17 Feb - 6 Apr
28 Apr - 1 Jun

Course Coordinator / Lecturer

David Wiltshire

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage  Description
Final Exam 65%
Problem Sets 20% The best 4 out of 5 willl count.
Test 15%

Textbooks / Resources

Required Texts

Goldstein, Herbert , Poole, Charles P., Safko, John L; Classical mechanics ; 3rd ed; Addison Wesley, 2002.

Recommended Reading

Arnold, V. I; Mathematical methods of classical mechanics ; 2nd ed.; Springer-Verlag, 1989.

I. Percival and D. Richards,; Introduction to Dynamics ; Cambridge University Press, 1982.

L. Landau and E. Lifschitz,; Mechanics ; 3rd Edition; Pergamon, 1976.

Saletan, Eugene J. , Cromer, Alan H; Theoretical mechanics ; Wiley, 1971.

T.L. Chow; Classical Mechanics ; Wiley, New York,, 1995.

Additional reading

D.E. Bourne and P.C. Kendall, Vector Analysis and Cartesian Tensors, 3rd ed, (CRC Press 2002), chapter 8, [for Orthogonal Transformations in §3 only].

D.W. Jordan and P. Smith, Nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equations, 4th ed. (Oxford
University Press, 2007) chapters 1,2 [for §4. Oscillations only]

N.A. Doughty, Lagrangian Interaction, (Addison Wesley, Sydney, 1990), chapters 12,13
[for §6. Special Relativity only].

Additional Course Outline Information

Academic integrity

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,036.00

International fee $5,188.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see School of Physical & Chemical Sciences .

All PHYS326 Occurrences

  • PHYS326-25S1 (C) Semester One 2025