Classical Mechanics 3rd Edition

Book arrived a few days late, but I wasn't in a hurry for it. As far as the book goes, we used it in my undergraduate courses. It is far better than the other books my university attempted to use for this subject, but this is still a pretty heavy subject to learn from a book alone. I just Purchased this new copy to prepare to go back to college for a graduate degree.

This book arrived in absolutely perfect condition. I've bought plenty of new books before, but often they have the slightest dent and minor scuffs. But this book arrived in 3 layers of protective wrapping which ensured that it arrived in flawless condition. Absolutely beautiful.As for the book itself, we shall see! Still waiting to take the class (:

I am not satisfied with the printouts quality of each pages. It seemed to be a photocopy of a original book . I don't mind it is a second hand book but I care about it is a photocopy of a another one.

I was very impressed by the quality of this book.

I'm giving this one star (really should be zero) because of the print quality of the book. Other people have reviewed the subject matter content. This review is entirely with regard to the print quality.I ordered a hardback copy of this book, and that's what I got. However, the paper is newspaper quality. By newspaper quality I mean the type of paper that newspapers are printed on, which is a rough gray or tan low poundage paper. My university's bookstore sells copies with standard quality, acid free paper. I have no idea why the version sold by Amazon is lower quality.The paper is extremely rough. This roughness, unfortunately, makes the printing blurry compared with laser printed books, and especially blurry with some of the images which are barely readable. If you're looking to buy this book, then you are no stranger to books. You know what a physics book should feel like. When I flip through the pages of this book I find myself turning the pages very slowly because it feels like they will rip apart if I'm not too careful. The paper quality is really that bad.My suggestion is that you buy this particular book from your university's book store.

I found this to be one of the most readable textbooks during my graduate tenure. For the most part concepts are well laid out, and explained pretty well. You'll need to piece some things together on your own, but it's one of the better physics textbooks!

This book is great for learning the topic for the first time, and even better once you're looking for a good reference at a later time. It goes very deeply into the physics and philosophy of classical mechanics. The only background needed is vector calculus. The rest should flow naturally. If you don't understand everything on the first read, as some reviewers mentioned, this is not really a problem. This often happens with advanced textbooks, the authors know so much that they can't help but write discussions that are of a more general nature. In the case of Goldstein, you should be able to keep on reading without getting lost. This book is amazing, it covers point-particle physics up to continuum mechanics, and builds everything up to a point where you can go on a and study relativity and quantum mechanics with good confidence.I would give this book 6 stars if I could. However, the 3rd edition has turned what used to be an excellent book into some kind of butchery and orgy or less relevant topics. For example, very few people doing research actually care about chaos theory, aside from its coolness. While I learned this stuff from a mathematically rigorous standpoint decades ago, I never got to use it since then. Also I find it difficult to discuss chaos theory when stochastic processes are ignored. When doing experiments, you always deal with noise which will actually bury a lot of the interesting dynamics. I really don't see the point of altering Goldstein to cover chaos theory when several excellent textbooks on the topic already exist (Arnold, Devaney, Scheinermann).I bought the 3rd edition without knowing about its new slant. At the very least, they should have kept what was in the 2nd edition. Instead, they deleted entire sections which I used to love, such as the derivation of the Lagrangian density for an acoustic field (Appendix E). It's totally gone! I am no longer using the 3rd edition copy, and would consider selling it or getting rid of it. I am much better off with my 2nd edition copy.

Good book, helped me get though a lot more of physics class than I was qualified for at the time.