Course Name
Techniques of Theoretical Mechanics
Course Number
ph335
Year/Term
Fall-2025
Course Credits
4
Class meeting times
9 hours of lecture/discussion per week for 5 weeks.
Prerequisites
PH 212 and MTH 254
Course description
Newtonian, Lagrangian, and Hamiltonian classical mechanics. Special relativity with relativistic mechanics.
Topic/Day
Activities
Resources
Homework Due
W 9/24 Day 1
Photo Release Form
Consent to Participate in Research
Th 9/25 Day 2 MathBits
F 9/26 Day 3 MathBits
More Power Series
Visualization of Power Series Approximations
Hyperbola Trig Functions
M 9/29 Day 4 MathBits
Polar Coordinates Review
Cylindrical & Spherical Coordinates
Generalized Coordinates & Degrees of Freedom
Taylor 7.3
T 9/30 Day 5 MathBits
First-Order ODEs: Forms & Theorems
Separable ODE's
W 10/1 Day 6 MathBits
Vectors
Representations of Vectors
Matrix Elements as Dot Products
Dot Product in Matrix Notation Finding Matrix Elements
Components of Vectors in Multiple Coordinate Systems
Describing a Vector with 2 Different Coordinate Systems
Th 10/2 Day 7 MathBits
Calculating the Distance Between Two Points
The Distance Formula (Star Trek)
GMM: The Distance Formula
GEM 1.1.2, 1.1.4
Vectors in Different Coordinate Systems
F 10/3 Day 8 MathBits
The Spacetime Interval
W 10/8 Day 11
F 10/31 Day 28