The Book Is DONE!!!

At 05:17 on Monday, 31 January 2011 I finished the first draft of the book Theoretical Minimum I: Classical Mechanics by Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky. This book was written in Mathematica 7 and Mathematica 8.

The Book is Almost Done!

I am almost done with the final two cahpters of the book I am writing with Leonard Susskind! I will be done by Sunday!

Book Project Update

Well here I am again. Sorry about the lengthy delay in posting, I am in a full-scale assault on the book to finish it by the end of this week. I have completed chapter 16, am finishing up chapter 15, and will finish 17 and 18 by week's end! The first draft is nearly done!

Here is the book now:

Lecture 1: Dynamical systems.

Interlude 1: Calculus.

Interlude 2: Newtonian mechanics.

Lecture 2: Conservation laws, the principle of least action, and the Lagrangian.

Interlude 3: Vectors and vector spaces.

Lecture 3: Conservation laws imply symmetry.

Interlude 4: Symmetry.

Lecture 4: Time translation symmetry, the conservation of energy, and the Hamiltonian.

Interlude 5: Transformations and matrices.

Lecture 5: Pendulums and springs.

Interlude 6: Complex numbers and ordinary differential equations. 

Lecture 6: The Hamiltonian method of mechanics. 

Interlude 7: Vector analysis.

Lecture 7: Liouville's Theorem and Information Conservation

Interlude 8: Thermodynamics (almost complete)

Lecture 8: Charged Particles in Electromagnetic Fields and an Introduction to Poisson Brackets

Interlude 9: Chaos (not done yet)

Lecture 9: Poisson Brackets and Canonical Transformations

Major New result on Dinosaur Extinction

MAST member Jack Horner (not the paleontologist) has written a paper establishing that the asteroid impact theory of dinosaur exctintion is not necessary to explain the exctintion.

His paper can be found here: http://www.madscitech.org/csg/dinosaur.pdf

Some new results

MAST has begun to post some research results!

1) I have started to do some dripping handrail models of accretion disks. You can find them here: http://www.madscitech.org/csg/accretion.html

2) James Firmiss and I have begun serious work on neutron star equations of state, results will be put up shortly.

3) Chris Winfield is giving a talk on local solvability at the American Mathematical Society meeting in New Orleans, that talk is located here: http://www.madscitech.org/csg/AMS10mintalk.pdf

4) We are doing research and development of database capabilities in Mathematica, mostly due to the efforts of Rocky Wenz.

More results will be reported as they occur!

Book Update

I have now completed 13 chapters out of 18!

Here is the chapter list so far:

Lecture 1: Dynamical systems.

Interlude 1: Calculus.

Interlude 2: Newtonian mechanics.

Lecture 2: Conservation laws, the principle of least action, and the Lagrangian.

Interlude 3: Vectors and vector spaces.

Lecture 3: Conservation laws imply symmetry.

Interlude 4: Symmetry.

Lecture 4: Time translation symmetry, the conservation of energy, and the Hamiltonian.

Interlude 5: Transformations and matrices.

Lecture 5: Pendulums and springs.

Interlude 6: Complex numbers and ordinary differential equations. 

Lecture 6: The Hamiltonian method of mechanics. 

Interlude 7: Vector analysis.

I am now working on Lecture 7: Liouville's Theorem and Information Conservation

Summer School in Scientific Computation

I would like to announce the Madison Area Science and Technology Summer School for Computational Science.

This will be a long Summer School, June 15, 2011 through August 15, 2011.

Tentatively, this will be held at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of Physics.

Details can be found at the web site: www/madscitech.org/isc/sschool1.htmlThis web site will be completely functional by January 7, 2011.