An Introductory Course in Lagrangian Mechanics
This is an introductory course in Lagrangian mechanics provided for college students and anyone who is familiar with Newtonian mechanics and calculus.
In this course you will learn how to apply Lagrangian mechanics to the classical systems and find their equations of motion and physical quantities. When applied to the classical systems, Lagrangian mechanics is equivalent to the Newtonian mechanics, but more easier than Newtonian mechanics, especially when you are dealing with more complicated systems.
This course is made of three sections:
Lagrangian Dynamics: this section begins with writing Lagrangian (or Lagrange function) of a system in a generalized coordinates in terms of independent coordinates, by finding constraint functions and number of degrees of freedom of the system. You will learn how to apply Euler-Lagrange equations (Lagrange's equations of the second kind) to the independent coordinates and find the equations of motion of the system. Some example of Lagrangian of classical systems are discussed in this section.
Generalized Forces: This section begins with definition of generalized conservative forces. Then by writing Lagrangian without imposing constraint functions and by applying Lagrange's equations of first kind, you learn how to find constraint forces of a system.
Conservation Laws: in this section you will learn how to find conserved generalized momentum (linear and angular momentum) if there is a cyclic coordinate in Lagrangian (i.e. Lagrangian is not implicit function of a coordinate); and how to find conserved energy of the system if Lagrangian is not a implicit function of time.
Register to this course and enjoy learning Lagrangian mechanics!
