NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA FOR THE MODERN STUDENT

At some point in their careers, most physicists make an attempt to read and understand Newton's Principia. Unfortunately, it is an extremely difficult book — it quickly becomes clear that one does not simply 'read' the Principia. Even for a professional physicist, Newton's prose (written in Latin and translated to English) is difficult to follow. His diagrams and figures are complicated and confusing. To understand fully what Newton had done, the problems he posed would have to be solved by the reader.

Newton's geometric methods and techniques, and the geometry and vocabulary that passed for common knowledge in the late 17th century, are now arcane and all but inaccessible to a modern reader. The contents of the Principia are not. Most physicists and physics students, and many scientists in general, would find the physics in the Principia interesting, illuminating, and useful.

This book presents all the wonderful physics in the Principia in a manner that a modern reader can recognize and understand, using physics and mathematics as we understand them in the 21st century.

Contents:
PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroduction to the PrincipiaNewton's Principia:DefinitionsThe Laws of MotionThe Motion of Bodies:The Method of Limits and RatiosFinding Central ForcesConic–Section OrbitsFinding Conic–Section Orbits Given a FocusFinding Orbits When no Focus is GivenFinding Motion in Given OrbitsRectilinear Ascent and DescentFinding Orbits for any Central ForcePrecessing OrbitsConstrained MotionObjects Attracted by Central ForcesAttractive Forces of Spherical BodiesAttractive Forces of Non-Spherical BodiesMotion of Minimally Small BodiesMotion in Resisting Media:The Linear Resistive Force —bνThe Quadratic Resisting Force —kν2The Resisting Force —bν — kν2Circular Orbits in Resisting MediaThe Density and Compression of FluidsSimple Pendulums with Resisting ForcesThe Motion of FluidsWave Motion through FluidsThe Circular Motion of FluidsThe System of the World:IntroductionRules for the Study of SciencePhenomenaPropositions of Book IIIGeneral ScholiumEpilogue:Newton's Principia for the Modern StudentReferencesIndex
Readership: Undergraduate students of physics and mathematics, as well as academics and engineers.

Dr Joseph Gallant is currently a physics professor at Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is at the end of a 30-year career teaching university-level, undergraduate physics and his outstanding student evaluations show he is an effective physics communicator. Before that, he earned a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.His publications include a 2002 article 'The Shape of the Eiffel Tower' in the American Journal of Physics (2002) and the book Doing Physics with Scientific Notebook (Wiley, 2012). Both cover topics based on the classical mechanics Newton invented, and a significant part of the book covers material either directly or indirectly related to the physics in the Principia.