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I want to know which book is the best for undergraduate classical mechanics, given that I am well equipped with newtonian mechanics (From: University Physics 13th Edition by Young and Freedman)

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1 Answer

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I quite like Morin's Introduction to Classical Mechanics (which is for smart first year undergrads, but has some basic Lagrangian approaches) [ Little bit more advanced is John Taylor's Classical Mechanics, which is also quite nice ]. Theres one section in the Feynman lectures on the principle of least action, which i think is a nice read.

For a second course, Goldstein's Classical Mechanics and Landau and Lifshitz' Mechanics are good (and classical) choices, and I'd recommend having Goldstein on hand since it does explain some of the mathematics while Landau doesn't (Landau is a Russian book and hence incredibly terse - but the series is highly insightful). Marion and Thorton's Classical Dynamics is another good book.

One I didn't like was Hand and Finch's Analytical Mechanics though.

I think the order of acquisition I would follow is Goldstein, Morin, Marion, Landau.

Also, this would be better posted on Physics.SE.

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