An Introduction to Mechanics

This is a physics textbook. It doesn't come with the gimmicks and terrible online learning resources that plague many a Pearson or Wiley text. And even better, it explains physics! Now that is not to say this book is perfect. The text often relies too heavily on math which ends up obfuscating the beauty of the mechanical universe. For that reason, I would suggest Professors consider "The Mechanical Universe: Mechanics and Heat" for their advanced introductory mechanics course. It clearly explains physical intuition while giving students the mathematical tools they need to actually do physics. K&K (as this text is known) is a classic for a reason. The structure of the book lends to a strong mathematical foundation for any future physics work, but it isn't the best.

kleppner killed my last brain cell

Other reviews are accurate. It's a classic with great problems but you'll have to use an unofficial solution manual to check most of your answers.

When I read the first pages of this book, I thought: "This book is going to be excellent", but now, I've changed my mind: I arrived at page 34, and I don't understand anything. I read it at least, three times, and I still don't understand it. So, two stars.

Excellent explanations and problems

Really good textbook! Great practice problems and examples in every single chapter, very wide verity of problems

Great condition, so much better than reading the pdf

good

the best mechanic text book ever

excelent a useful approach to mechanics

This is a physics textbook. It doesn't come with the gimmicks and terrible online learning resources that plague many a Pearson or Wiley text. And even better, it explains physics! Now that is not to say this book is perfect. The text often relies too heavily on math which ends up obfuscating the beauty of the mechanical universe. For that reason, I would suggest Professors consider "The Mechanical Universe: Mechanics and Heat" for their advanced introductory mechanics course. It clearly explains physical intuition while giving students the mathematical tools they need to actually do physics. K&K (as this text is known) is a classic for a reason. The structure of the book lends to a strong mathematical foundation for any future physics work, but it isn't the best.

kleppner killed my last brain cell

Other reviews are accurate. It's a classic with great problems but you'll have to use an unofficial solution manual to check most of your answers.

When I read the first pages of this book, I thought: "This book is going to be excellent", but now, I've changed my mind: I arrived at page 34, and I don't understand anything. I read it at least, three times, and I still don't understand it. So, two stars.

Excellent explanations and problems

Really good textbook! Great practice problems and examples in every single chapter, very wide verity of problems

Great condition, so much better than reading the pdf

good

the best mechanic text book ever

excelent a useful approach to mechanics

Awesome as expected

Great textbook for an second time through mechanics.

These days I teach physics for a living, but in 1982 I used this book as a freshman in an honors class. Here are some impressions from going back over the book three decades later. For a long time, I don't think there was any alternative to Kleppner and Kolenkow for a student who really wanted to know the whys and wherefores of freshman mechanics. The big-selling texts like Halliday may carefully derive certain things, but in other cases they just pop an equation onto the page and expect the student to use it without question. Today, however, there are many free, online alternatives to the big-budget commercial texts, and some of these do provide a level of intellectual honesty similar to K&K's. In addition, there is a recent commercial text by Morin that targets the same type of student as K&K. There are many challenging problems that are of very high quality. The focus of these problems is on symbolic rather than numerical computation. The book includes many topics that are not typically included in a freshman text, e.g., nutation, the moment of inertia tensor, and relativistic four-vectors. The book is designed for highly motivated and talented students, at schools with highly selective admissions, who have already taken a rigorous high school physics course, and who have already completed about a year of calculus. It would be a disaster to try to use this book with a less highly selected population. The book was originally published in 1973. McGraw-Hill kept it in print over the decades, but hiked the price outrageously and showed no interest in bringing out a new edition. Eventually the authors got the rights back from McGraw-Hill, redid the manuscript in LaTeX, made some changes, and published the 2nd edition in 2010 (37 years after the first edition!) through Cambridge University press. Cambridge brought the price way back down, which is great. The changes made in the second edition are good ones, but they are mostly extremely minimal, and the book still shows its age. There is no discussion of numerical integration of the equations of motion. Attempts are made to help the student check results of symbolic results, e.g., by giving the output for a specific input, but today this would be far better done using open-source computer software such as LON-CAPA. Diagrams show common student lab apparatus from the Sputnik era. (The line art appears to have been redrawn on a computer, but is basically exactly the same.) The book predates essentially all modern pedagogical research in physics, and it does not do any of the things that that research shows can have an impact on common conceptual difficulties. The book was unusual for first-semester freshman texts of its time in providing a fairly thorough introduction to special relativity. This is especially important if the students are to move on to Purcell's Electricity and Magnetism (also available in a new edition from CUP), which assumes a thorough familiarity with SR. Although the treatment of SR has been updated significantly in the second edition, to my taste it is still dreary and slavishly traditional, and compares poorly with the much nicer and more modern approach used in Morin. K&K still use the relativistic mass convention, which professional relativists stopped using ca. 1950. K&K use Einstein's 1905 axiomatization of special relativity, which to my mind reflects a century-old world-view and would be better replaced with an approach based on symmetry, as in Morin. The examples and the presentation of experimental tests of SR have essentially not been updated since the 1973 edition. For example, the old edition presented the concepts of GPS, which was being developed in the 70s. That was cool for its time, but the new edition merely sticks in the modern acronym GPS into the preexisting text. One important improvement is the elimination of ict from the four-vectors, which at least gives the book more of a feel of having been written after 1950.

As a physics major, this book is excellent. However, I say that as a physics major who was already familiar and some experience working problems in mechanics. This book is not something you will be able to coast through and I would definitely say to avoid it if you haven't taken an introductory course in mechanics prior. This book is difficult in the best way possible. For those willing to take the challenge, expect to spend hours working through the end of chapter problems and do yourself a favor by solving all of the problems. There are not that many because a great deal of thought was put into constructing them and they each test your understanding of important concepts and will stress your problem solving abilities. The mathematics involved is not very complex (mainly calculus 1 but with some basic differential equations), however, it does require you to really understand how to use the mathematics to solve problems, not just to compute answers, which I think makes this a true physics book. Overall, the book is excellent in the insight it offers and the challenge it presents. Again, be warned, this book is meant for physics majors and/or the highly motivated. You will become frustrated and some of the problems are just about out of reach, but do not give up. It is a rewarding experience and will truly introduce you to the world of mechanics.

Great copy. Great service. Just what my college student needed on time as promised

Its important to say outright, there is no book that comes close to the quality of the discourse and problems that are in this book. It is truly in a class by itself and is not for the feign of heart. This is a difficult introductory text to digest and the difficulty of the problems are notorious. I used the first edition to supplement my AP Physics C Mechanics class. My students were split between loathing and loving it, and sometimes both simultaneously. The highlights of this text and its first edition are: the mathematical framework that leads the textbook, the proper treatment of the primacy of setting up coordinate systems for dynamics, the subtleties associated with dealing with variable mass systems, Newton's shell theorem, the treatment of the harmonic oscillator and its applications, the expansive treatment of angular momentum as a prerequisite to understanding torque, the thorough treatment of the central force problem and last but not least, the excellent presentation of special relativity that closes the book. The only thing I believe this text is missing, is the Gauss's Law of gravitation and the potential formulation of gravitation. I think this is important to include because students generally take an introductory E&M class following this class, and it never hurts to introduce students to these topics for gravitation because students tend to have a much better conceptual grasp of the gravitational field than the electric field. Furthermore, Gauss's Law allows students to attack a broader set of problems in gravitation and reformulate Newton's Shell theorem in a much simpler way. The reason this edition gets 4 stars instead of 5 is because I feel that the second edition was a disappointment. I was hoping for a whole new class of problems, and I figured that after 40 years since the first edition that the authors would have substantially expanded the problem sets, that has not happened. Another strong point of the first edition was the brief chapter on vector calculus. The authors say in the forward to the teacher that they omitted this material because they felt it was unnecessary and caused too much math anxiety on the part of the students. I feel that it does a disservice to the students, at the very least they should have included and expanded on the material in the Appendix. The reason is that it serves as an excellent introduction to the mathematics necessary for understanding fields. I still believe that it is worth getting the second edition, because they did clean up the text a bit to make it easier to read and use for students. Furthermore, Cambridge Press deserves credit for making this book and its prior edition affordable. So get it, you might regret it, but in a good way.

I've taught a freshman, college physics course out of this book for nearly twenty years, and I'm a big fan. The book is a gem, and my students love it as much as I do. I consider it to be the best introduction to mechanics available. The book is pitched at a somewhat higher level than the standard Halliday & Resnick-type texts. It not only provides more sophisticated and interesting problems than these other introductory texts, but it provides a deeper context for the mechanics it teaches. Reading this book will teach you about physics, not just mechanics. It introduces readers to the way physicists think about the world and how they solve problems, topics that are completely absent from nearly every other introductory text I am aware of. In addition to the more satisfying approach to teaching mechanics, the book is a treasure trove of problems. In fact, many of the problems introduced in the text have become classics that are now used in other books. The text weaves interesting problems into the insightful discussion of the material being introduced in a way that makes the problems part of the text itself, not just "example problems." The end-of-chapter problems are chosen so that each one has an important purpose for the reader; they are not just make-work problems. Anyone who has studied physics knows that it is learned by solving problems, not just reading texts, so there is a premium on having a battery of good problems. This book provides a long list of excellent problems in each chapter. If you want a book that will provide an introduction to physics, not just mechanics, this is the one for you. It's brilliant.

I love this book so much!

This book is an almost exact duplicate of the first edition. There are a few new problems and examples but nothing radically new. The hints and answers have been moved to the back of the book. Saves you money. Get the first edition. Even in that edition the important topic of one and two dimensional relative motion receives only one problem. For that use BENSON-UNIVERSITY PHYSICS and SENA-A COLLECTION of QUESTIONS and PROBLEMS in PHYSICS.

I'm a second year Physics major. Used this book my freshman year and thought it was unnecessarily hard, but looking back at the problems and the texts, I've realized how compactly and efficiently this book explains topics at a high level. Would recommend, but if you have no physics experience prior, don't be surprised if you spend almost 1-3 hours on some of these problems as they are pretty difficult for newcomers to physics.

Most large research universities offer multiple tracks of introductory mechanics to their students: (1) a “physics for poets” class for curious humanists or students scared of science, (2) an algebra-based course for, e.g., architecture majors that is often offered as part of a complete, one semester course, (3) an algebra-based course for premeds, (4) a calculus based course for “scientists and engineers”, and (5) an “honors”–level course for prospective physics majors (or serious chemistry, biology, and geology students). There are many good books available for categories (1) – (4). The options for (5) are dramatically more limited. Indeed, instructors of advanced first-year mechanics classes often use one of the standard texts for (4) and supplement their lectures with their own notes. The book at hand eliminates the need for this latter option. In the last half century, there have been, to my knowledge, only a handful of books written specifically for category (5): The Feynman Lectures (vol. 1), The Berkeley Physics Course (vol.1 by Kittel, Knight, and Ruderman), Physics by Roller and Blum, and this volume, An Introduction to Mechanics, by Kleppner and Kolenkow. Kleppner and Kolenkow (KK) is by far the best of these. It combines the elegance of the Feynman lectures with the pedagogical insight of Roller and Bloom. (NB – Kittel et alii and Roller and Blum are out of print.) KK has great problems and just the right number of excellent examples. It is thorough, but not voluminous. It begins with an emphasis on the “math toolkit” and spends a lot of time throughout the text on the difficult job of putting abstract math skills to work for the business of problem solving in physics. KK seem to remember what beginning mechanics students worry about. There are many explanatory discussions of the physics at hand – see, e.g., section 4.9, on impulse and momentum flow. In other words, it does a good job of teaching the culture of physics, something that books from category (4) generally fail to do. The heart of the book comprises Chapter 2 and 3 on Newton’s laws. The topics here are beautifully and systematically laid out, and the examples in these chapters are particularly helpful. Work and energy are then handled after momentum. Again, the discussion is thorough and clear. I would have preferred to see a one-page discussion of the equivalence of a conservative force, a potential function, the path independence of work, and the null work done around a closed path. All these points are made, but a more focused discussion would be better. The discussions of the central force problem, the harmonic oscillator, and rigid body motion are superb and are introduced in a nice, orderly progression. The inclusion of special (and a bit of general) relativity and dynamics is appropriate; Minkowski space is discussed but should, in my opinion, be introduced earlier and as a part of Chapter 12. At the level of quibbling, I would have liked to have seen a page on the perpendicular axis theorem and a brief mention of Q in electromagnetic cavities. One must also be careful not to associate the center of percussion with the sweet spot of a baseball bat; it is at the node of a normal mode of the bat’s vibration. In summary, this book should be on the shelf of all serious physics students and practicing physicists.

The book is very convenient, as I have it on my iPad. However, there are some discrepancies between this book and the one my teacher uses. Rather frustrating, as it effected my performance on a homework assignment.

Before this book, I was kind of a wimpy physics professor, but when I made all my students use this book, everyone thinks that I'm the biggest baddest physics teacher on the block.

I have enjoyed reading every page of this book. It is the essence of perfection. Every word, every sentence, is chosen carefully; every concept is explained beautifully. The authors' love of physics shines through the pages of this book.

This is a very good text on the principles of classical mechanics. The explanations are clear and concise and the examples are illuminating and even entertainiing at times. Highly recommended.

pedestrian

Nice product

Only thing that I did not like about this book was the system of questions - there were rarely solutions and just numerical answers. In addition, it only had the numerical answers for some of the questions. It was more advanced than the course I was studying, but this gave me additional insight and the explanations were the stand-out feature of this book.

A really well laid out book, excellent

Brilliant, a must have.

excellent service, perfect book

Al realizar un análisis de l temario, encuentro en este libro un amplio campo de conceptos y ejemplos de la ingeniería mecánica que me hacen recomendar comprar y leer este libro. Jaime za Enero 14, 2021.

Brilliant book.second edition is written in lucid laugage comparing withe 1st edition

Ottimo testo di Meccanica che consiglierei per i corsi di Fisica Generale (prima parte) per i corsi di laurea in Fisica e Ingegneria.

Es un libro que te ayuda a iniciarte en la mecánica clásica (no confundir con la elemental), muy recomendado juntos con otros textos para ayudarte a entender esta bella parte de la Física.

The only drawback I had with my order was that it was a bit damaged at the bottom of the front hard cover when it arrived. However, the book’s content alone it’s very useful and completely worthy.

I love this book, hundreds of exercises with detailed solutions online for free. Perfect for students that have just finished high school and want to learn about mechanics.

Don't buy it , go for asian version, its binding is so bad that all pages separated from book.

Excelente libro para un primer curso de mecánica universitario

There's really no other book that compares to this one. The details and all the examples are just perfect.