Classical Mechanics (Kibble and Berkshire book)

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Classical Mechanics (5th ed.)
Author Tom W. B. Kibble & Frank H. Berkshire
Country UK
Language English
Subject Physics
Genre Non-fiction; science text
Publisher Imperial College Press
Publication date
 2004
Pages 500
ISBN 978-1-86094-435-2 (pbk)

Classical Mechanics (5th ed.) is a college physics textbook written by Thomas Walter Bannerman Kibble(born 1932), who is a Fellow of the Royal Society of England, and Frank Berkshire of the Imperial College London Mathematics Department. It is published by the Imperial College Press. The book covers fundamental principles and techniques of classical mechanics, one of the branches of physics.

Publication history

The English language editions were published as follows:[1] The first edition was published by Kibble, as Kibble, T. W. B. Classical Mechanics. London: McGraw–Hill, 1966. 296 p.
The second ed., also just by Kibble, was in 1973 The 4th, jointly with F H Berkshire, was in 1996 The 5th, jointly with F H Berkshire, in 2004

The book has been translated into several languages:

  • French, by Michel Le Ray and Françoise Guérin as Mécanique classique
  • Modern Greek, by Δ. Σαρδελής και Π. Δίτσας, επιμέλεια Γ. Ι. Παπαδόπουλος. Σαρδελής, Δ. Δίτσας, Π as 'Κλασσική μηχανική
  • German
  • Turkish, by Kemal Çolakoğlu as Klasik mekanik
  • Spanish, as Mecánica clásica
  • Portuguese as Mecanica classica

Reception

The book receives mixed reviews.

"If you want more worked examples, you probably should use Marion and Thornton (or Fowles and Cassidy) as a supplement (or as a main text)."- Alex Chen (Amazon)

"I did not feel "safe" with the book, as though I was constantly missing something and a great deal of it was just not satisfying. The first book of the sort I ever read which strongly discouraged continuing with the book. It has a messy advancement of ideas and most interesting topics were not well discussed... at least as much of as I got to read." (Goodreads)

"I have pulled far too much hair from my head because of frustration with this book. ...The end-of-chapter exercises are brutally hard... The problems seem to assume knowledge that wasn't presented in the chapter... there are no worked-out solutions, even online... The organization of the book... is beyond me. For instance, the Lagrangian is introduced as early as Chapter 2, with several sections devoted to it. However, the Largrangian is addressed in very few problems and doesn't appear again until Chapter 10, where it is analyzed for an entire chapter - so why introduce it in Chapter 2? . Other chapters have many skipped steps, incomplete derivations (or, in the case of the chapter on the dipole expansion, complete absence of derivations and frequent use of "oh this is obvious!"), and frequent inconsistency between using the continuous (integral) and discrete (summation) formulation. Heck, the authors even write the quadrupole moment as a scalar! (Why, oh why, would you ever lead students to believe that the quadrupole moment is a scalar?!) Overall, I can't tell who this book is intended for. The problems are too hard for someone first learning post-freshman level classical mechanics but the material is not advanced enough for this to be a graduate text... I switched to Goldstein's Classical Mechanics... it's much more readable, intuitive, and enjoyable (and the problems are doable and insightful)... (Amazon)"

" I found this book to be a fantastic overview of classical mechanics. Having already had a fairly extensive background in undergraduate level math and physics, I found the level on which this book operates to be a perfect next step: very rigorous but clear, with many excellent problems at the end of each chapter which introduce important topics and provide a good range of difficulty. This would probably not be a good introduction to the topic, but would be excellent for anyone with at least the equivalent of a freshman physics and calculus course under their belt who wants a more advanced treatment." (Amazon)

The fourth edition was reviewed by C Isenberg in 1997 in the European Journal of Physics. Isenberg states[2]

“This volume, by Kibble and Berkshire, has proved to be a successful book... the written content and presentation are all excellent.”

It was also reviewed in New Scientist and Contemporary Physics.[3]

The various editions are held in 1789 libraries[4] In comparison, the various (2011) editions of Herbert Goldstein's Classical Mechanics are held in 1772 libraries[5]

Contents (5th edition)

See also

References

  1. ↑ World Cat author listing
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ World Cat item record
  5. ↑ WorldCat item record

External links

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