"A remarkable work which will remain a document of the first rank for the historian of mechanics." — Louis de BroglieIn this masterful synthesis and summation of the science of mechanics, Rene Dugas, a leading scholar and educator at the famed Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, deals with the evolution of the principles of general mechanics chronologically from their earliest roots in antiquity through the Middle Ages to the revolutionary developments in relativistic mechanics, wave...
How do we know that molecules really exist? An important clue came from Brownian movement, a concept developed in 1827 by botanist Robert Brown, who noticed that tiny objects like pollen grains shook and moved erratically when viewed under a microscope. Nearly 80 years later, in 1905, Albert Einstein explained this «Brownian motion» as the result of bombardment by molecules. Einstein offered a quantitative explanation by mathematically estimating the average distance covered by the particles...
Ever a source of philosophical conjecture and debate, the concept of time represents the beating heart of physics. This final work by the distinguished physicist Hans Reichenbach represents the culmination and integration of a lifetime's philosophical contributions and inquiries into the analysis of time. The result is an outstanding overview of such qualitative, or topological, attributes of time as order and direction.Beginning with a discussion of the emotive significance of time,...
Since Lagrange laid the foundation of analytical dynamics some two centuries ago, the discipline has continued to evolve and develop, embracing the theories of Hamilton and Jacobi, Einstein's relativity theory and advanced theories of classical mechanics.This text proposes to give graduate students in science and engineering a strong background in the more abstract and intellectually satisfying areas of dynamical theory. It is assumed that students are familiar with the principles of...
