So I am an undergraduate in Electrical Engineering. We had a course on Physics in our freshman year which is equivalent to Classical Mechanics I as taught in MIT. I am interested in studying advanced classical mechanics (which includes Lagrangian formulation and other stuff) as equivalent to Classical Mechanics lecture by Susskind. I wanted to know are they any prerequisites which I should know about before taking this course.
In general what are the prereqs for this course?
Best Answer
Formally, probably not that many. Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics are about taking a good look at the foundations of classical mechanics, and reformulating them in ways which are cleaner and provide nice insights, but which are still strictly equivalent to Newtonian mechanics. As such, you have two main types of prerequisites:
On the mathematical side, you will likely need to fluent enough with the calculus of several real variables as well as comfortable with the associated geometrical manipulations. The only really new tool you will need is the calculus of variations; this is usually developed enough in analytical mechanics textbooks that you'll learn enough of it from there to keep you going, but it wouldn't hurt to have a read on it beforehand or parallel to the mechanics.
On the physics side, it will be helpful to have a small but well-refined workhorse set of physical systems on whose Newtonian mechanics you've worked with thoroughly - think harmonic oscillator, pendulums in 2D and 3D, Keplerian motion, and so on. These serve a dual purpose: they let you test your newly-gained skills to see how it works out in practice and, in doing so, they let you see how and why the new formulations are better or cleaner (or not).
(Having said which, I'm not very familiar with Susskind's book.)