This book begins with the ancient parts of classical mechanics: the variational principle, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms, and Poisson brackets. The simple pendulum provides a glimpse of the beauty of elliptic curves, which will also appear later in rigid body mechanics. Geodesics in Riemannian geometry are presented as an example of a Hamiltonian system. Conversely, the path of a non-relativistic particle is a geodesic in a metric that depends on the potential. Orbits around a black hole are found. Hamilton-Jacobi theory is discussed, showing a path towards quantum mechanics and a conn ... More

This book begins with the ancient parts of classical mechanics: the variational principle, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms, and Poisson brackets. The simple pendulum provides a glimpse of the beauty of elliptic curves, which will also appear later in rigid body mechanics. Geodesics in Riemannian geometry are presented as an example of a Hamiltonian system. Conversely, the path of a non-relativistic particle is a geodesic in a metric that depends on the potential. Orbits around a black hole are found. Hamilton-Jacobi theory is discussed, showing a path towards quantum mechanics and a connection to the eikonal of optics. The three body problem is studied in detail, including small orbits around the Lagrange points. The dynamics of a charged particle in a magnetic field, especially a magnetic monopole, is studied in the Hamiltonian formalism. Spin is shown to be a classical phenomenon. Symplectic integrators that allow numerical solutions of mechanical systems are derived. A simplified version of Feigenbaum's theory of period doubling introduces chaos. Following a classification of Mobius transformations, this book studies chaos on the complex plane: Julia sets, Fatou sets, and the Mandelblot are explained. Newton's method for solution of non-linear equations is viewed as a dynamical system, allowing a novel approach to the reduction of matrices to canonical form. This is used as a stepping stone to the KAM theory of maps of a circle to itself, unravelling a connection to the Diophantine problem of number theory. KAM theory of the solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation using Newton's iteration concludes the book.