本書是經典力學領域的經典著作,預備知識要求極低,僅需基礎微積分和本科基礎物理學知識,因此適合本科到研究生入門階段的課程使用,也適合數學、物理和工程專業的學生群體。This is an intuitively motivated presentation ofmany topics in classical mechanics and related areas of control theory and calculus of variations. All topics throughout the book are treated with zero tolerance for unrevealing definitions and for proofs which leave the reader in the dark. Some areas of particular interest are: an extremely short derivation of the ellipticity of planetary orbits; a statement and an explanation of the “tennis racket paradox”; a heuristic explanation (and a rigorous treatment) of the gyroscopic effect; a revealing equivalence between thedynamics of a particle and statics of a spring; a short geometrical explanation of Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle, and more. In the last chapter, aimed at more advanced readers, the Hamiltonian and the momentum are compared to forces in a certain static problem. This gives a palpable physical meaning to some seemingly abstract concepts and theo