Links for NST IB Physics B `Classical Dynamics'

Handouts and Corrections | Books | Resources

Handouts and Corrections

The handouts, examples sheets etc. for this course will be available the course page of the Cavendish Teaching website, for registered users.

There are some corrections for the printed handouts/examples sheets.

Books

Kibble & Berkshire: Classical Mechanics (Imperial College Press, 5th Edition, 2004).

Faber: Fluid Dynamics for Physicists (CUP, 1995). This is available as an ebook.

Volume I (Mainly mechanics, radiation and heat).

Volume II (Mainly electromagnetism and matter).

The full text of both of these -- and of Volume III (Quantum mechanics) -- are freely available here to read online.

Also, you can view some of Feynman's lectures from 1964, recorded by the BBC, on the the Project Tuva website (requires Microsoft Silverlight to be installed), which have various interactive extras.

Resources on the Web

As the course progress, below I will put links to resources on the Web that relate to various topics discussed in the lectures, as the course progresses. Some are links to published papers, the full text for which is either freely available, or should be available via the University's subscription, if accessed from cam.ac.uk addresses.

• [animations] Foucault pendulum in different reference frames: stationary building, rotating building, the Sun.
  (I made these using the source code available on the Wikipedia page on the Foucault pendulum, but making a bigger version, more visible lines, and animating over a longer period.)

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• [video] Helen Czerski on the BBC, explaining the Coriolis effect, for hurricanes/roundabouts, from BBC Learning Zone (5m27s).

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• [video] `Bath-tub' vortex in the `Vorticity (1 of 2)' film (from about 19m47s to 22m40s), from the National Committee for Fluid Mechanics Films.
  (I put `bath-tub' in quotes, because it isn't a real bath-tub!)
• [papers] Three papers on the `Bath-tub' vortex.
  • Shapiro, A. H., 1962, `Bath-Tub Vortex', Nature, 196, 1080.
  • Binnie, A. M., 1964, `Some Experiments on the Bath-Tub Vortex', Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science, 6, 256.
  • Trefethen, L. M. et al., 1964, `The Bath-Tub Vortex in the Southern Hemisphere', Nature, 207, 1084.

• [book] Goodstein, D. L. & Goodstein, J. R., 1997, `Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motions of Planets Around the Sun'.

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• [papers] on Rutherford scattering.
  • Geiger, H. & Marsden, E., 1909, `On a Diffuse Reflection of the α-Particles', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, 82, 495.
  • Rutherford, E., 1911, `The scattering of α and β particles by matter and the structure of the atom', Philosophical Magazine, Series 6, 21, 669.

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• [java simulation] The orbit of the former planet Pluto, from NASA (I'd suggest you select `All Orbits' for the `Orbits:' choice to show all planets in white, with Pluto in blue).

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• [javascript animation] An illustration of `Mars Cycler' (also called the `Aldrin cycler', after Eugene `Buzz' Aldrin, who was the second astronaut on the Moon).

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• [videos] Illustrating `evaporation' of globular cluster:
  • simulation;
  • observations extrapolating motion over next 10,000 years (or here, or here).

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• [paper] Stephenson, F. R., 2002, `Harold Jeffreys Lecture 2002: Historical eclipses and Earth's rotation', Astronomy & Geophysics, 44, 2.22.

• [papers] Various papers on the `celt' (or `rattleback').
  • Walker, G. T., 1895, `On a curious Dynamical Property of Celts', Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 8, 305.
  • Walker, G. T., 1896, `On a dynamical top', Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, 28, 175.
  • Bondi, H., 1986, `The Rigid Body Dynamics of Unidirectional Spin', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, 405, 265.
  • Garcia, A. & Hubbard, M., 1988, `Spin Reversal of the Rattleback: Theory and Experiment', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, 418, 165.
  • Nordmark, A. & Essén, H., 1999, `Systems with preferred spin direction', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, 455, 933.

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• [computer demonstrations] Interactive demonstrations of free precession of a rigid body:
  • using Poinsot's construction (as a starting point, try $a,b$ set to minimum, $c$ about half way, $\theta$ about half way, $L$ about three quarters);
  • or in body or space frames (as a starting point, try $h \sim 0.7$, $r \sim 0.25$, $u \sim 0.3$, and slide time slowly, try with/without cones in both space and body frames).
  (These are both from Wolfram/Mathematica, where you can download a cdf (`computable document format') viewer or plugin to view the demonstrations.)

• [java applets] Visualisations of various normal modes:
  • longitudinal waves for masses connected by springs;
  • transverse waves on weighted string;
  • waves on a circular membrane;
  • waves on a square membrane.
  (These are from this site, which has other useful Java applets for visualising various maths/physics.)

• [videos] `Auxetic' materials, i.e. with negative Poisson ratio.

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• [animation] Visualisation of S- and P-waves produced by an earthquake.

• [video] A self-righting lifeboat.

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• [video] For streamlines/streaklines etc. in fluid flow, see the film on `Flow Visualization' from the National Committee for Fluid Mechanics Films. Try from about 1m50s to 13m20s, but note that the audio and video are a bit out of synchronisation in places.

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• [paper] Newton's 1671/2 paper ... containing his New Theory about Light and Colors ..., which includes (p.3078) the text "... more or less curvity ... when I remembered that I had often seen a Tennis ball, struck with an oblique Racket, describe such a curve line", i.e. in modern terms, the Magnus effect.

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• [animation] Interacting triple vortex rings, from images painted by James Clerk Maxwell - the first Cavendish Professor of Physics - for display in his lensed Zoescope (from the 1860s), which is in the Cavendish Museum. This is a model of atoms being ever lasting vortices, and molecules being interacting vortices.

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• [videos] Vortex rings:
  • from QI Series 10, Episode 6;
  • in nature;
  • and as a cannon.

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• [webpage/animation] Drag on a sphere (plus animation of Kármán vortex street).