I hope that my question doesn't violate the posting rules. I was wondering if any of you have any resources (websites, books, etc.) for classical mechanics. My first week of classical mechanics has shown me that this class is going to be extremely challenging. The textbook for the class is John R. Taylor's 'Classical Mechanics', which is alright, but I personally don't like the way the material is presented.  This class seems to focus on two things: Classical concepts and deriving the equation that will describe physical situations. A very basic example, taking the equation a=f/m and integrating twice to get an equation that describes the position of an object. If there are any resources for learning and applying that type of problem, then please let me know! Or, if you know of another place where my question would be more appropriate, then just point the way.  Anyway, any advice, resource, ANYTHING, is greatly appreciated.
I'm a bachelor student majoring in math, and pretty interested in physics. I would like a book to study for classical mechanics, that will prepare me to work through . What books would be good for a beginner?
Uninstalling Ubuntu from dual boot / changing bootloader Can anyone explain why following code won't compile? At least on g++ 4.2.4.  And more interesting, why it will compile when I cast MEMBER to int?  #include &lt;vector&gt;  class Foo {   public:       static const int MEMBER = 1;   };  int main(){       vector&lt;int&gt; v;       v.push_back( Foo::MEMBER );       // undefined reference to `Foo::MEMBER'     v.push_back( (int) Foo::MEMBER ); // OK       return 0; } How can i show that two $R$-modules of finite rank are isomorphic if and only if they have the same rank, i.e., $R^n \cong R^m$ iff $n=m$. Interface vs Abstract Class (general OO) Print on terminal and into file simultaneously? Mobile phone battery charger I would like to know about the workings of mobile phone battery chargers. I know the basic principle, you take a transformer to bring it down to 9/6/3.7 volts then a bridge rectifier circuit and a capacitor input filter to rectify it into DC. Then you apply it to the battery. But I know this should not be enough, I need at least two things,   Protection against back current flow Switch off power when the battery is fully charged.   Can someone point me to something simple (apart from this ) Rigorously proving equal tension on both ends There is always one point in introductory mechanics that has been continuously bothering me ever since I had taken my freshman physics course - Why does a massless rope have its tension equal on both ends?  I have been searching for a good explanation on various textbooks at different levels, but none of them provided me a satisfactory explanation. They either   State directly "we assume the string is massless and the pulley has no friction, therefore the tension must be the same throughout the string" without further any elaboration and continue the calculation, Claim without any reasons that "whenever the rope and the pulley are massless and frictionless, the tension will be the same on both sides", or Explain using a lot of hand-waving arguments regarding infinite acceleration, non-zero moment of inertia, etc. , in one line or two.   Although those hand-waving arguments of type $(3)$ do sound quite reasonable to me and will convince me for a while every time I review them. But after a while, I will start feeling not well about this whole tension concept again.  Therefore, I am looking for a rigorous (in the physicist's sense) proof of exactly why and when do the tension in rope will be uniform, and hopefully from that I can clean up all of my conceptual difficulties. Here's the problem: if $S = \mathbb{Q}[x]/(x^2)$, compute the group  of automorphisms $\mbox{Aut}(S)$.   First off, I have the solution and I know it's isomorphic to the multiplicative group $\mathbb{Q}\backslash\{0\}$, so I'm trying to understand it. It uses what is called the substitution principle and the fact that the restriction of any endomorphism $\phi: \mathbb{Q}[x]\to \mathbb{Q}[x]$ to $\mathbb{Q}$ is the identity. It says that these two facts implies that the endomorphisms of $\mathbb{Q}[x]$ are in 1-1 correspondence with $h \in \mathbb{Q}[x]$, where the endomorphism corresponding to $h$ is $\phi_h : \mathbb{Q}[x] \to \mathbb{Q}[x]$ given by $\phi_h(f) = f(h)$ for $f \in \mathbb{Q}[x]$. I guess I just don't understand how it applied the substitution principle? It's probably obvious, but for some reason I am not getting it.  An explanation would be greatly appreciated! Or if you have a different solution, that'd be cool too. Thanks!! Rufus nor any other software can fix my 16GB usb drive after using RUFUS I wanted to make a bootable USB drive using Rufus. I opened the program went with all the default options and I clicked start BUT what I forgot to do is to select an iso because I thought it would just make the disk bootable without selecting anything. Unfortunately it did not. It gave me an error. I do not remember it because this was about 6 months ago after I gave up in fixing it. Anyway I tried to reformat it again using diskpart and it fails. With Rufus it says "ERROR while partitioning drive" and I think that was the initial error as well. Also during the struggle I got messages from windows saying that the disk is write protected and NO, there is no switch for that on the USB pendrive.   More info:     Transcend 16 GB     Rufus 1.4.9,     Frustrated student :/ The set of limit points of the sequence $1,\frac12,\frac14,\frac34,\frac18,\frac38,\frac58,\frac78,\frac1{16},\frac3{16},\ldots$ Reading shapefile using C#? If nonempty, nonsingleton $Y$ is a proper convex subset of a simply ordered set $X$, then $Y$ is ray or interval? This is from Exercise 7 in p. 92 in Munkres's Topology.  Except for the trivial cases such as $Y$ is empty set or singleton, it seems if $Y$ is convex in an simply ordered set $X$ then $Y$ is interval or ray.  But I cannot start my proof because I cannot use $\sup$ or $\max$ functions.  What should I do? Why is "glide symmetry" its own type? Artin's Algebra pages 155 &amp; 156 list the types of symmetry of a plane figure as:   Reflective Rotational Translational Glide   He then goes on to say "Figures such as wallpaper patterns may have two talk about other figures having combinations of independent" symmetries. EDIT: He says "... having combinations of independent translational symmetries". See Joriki's answer.  Why doesn't glide symmetry count as having two independent (reflection + translation) symmetries? If we're going to count combinations, why not have rotation + translation etc. as their own types too? I have this annoying problem in Gmail. Spammers are by-passing the Gmail spam filters and are so clever that I am not able to create a manual filter of my own to block them. They are sending me junk mails from e-mail IDs of the form:  Jewelskart@greatestjewels.in via watchstore.cleanmail.in  Shoppingkart@shoppers.in via watchstore.cleanmail.in   In general,  something@somethingelse.in via watchstore.cleanmail.in   Now, I cant set a filter for each and every mail as they are from different IDs. The common part is the via address which is watchstore.cleanmail.in. But when I try creating a filter with watchstore.cleanmail.in in From field, Gmail doesn't list these emails. In short, the filter is not able to detect via addresses.  Report Spam/Unsubscribe options aren't working.  How can I get rid of these annoying spammers? Prevent sent emails treated as junk mails using php mail function Chat requirement to post images should be made explicit There is (apparently) a 100 reputation requirement to upload and post images through chat.  There isn't any easily located documentation on this, however. 100 global reputation is listed as the privilege for , while the chat FAQ and help both do not mention any restrictions on uploading images.  As such, could somewhere other than  be used to indicate that there is a reputation requirement in chat for uploading images? Calculate difference between two dates (number of days)? How is canonicity of derivative works determined for Star Wars? For all types of derivative works, namely:   Movies Novels Comic books Other written works (including RPG materials) Cartoons Video games Derivative movies (such as the infamous Ewok movies and even more infamous )   According to what rules does something become "canon" and who is responsible for the evaluation of a published work? I know standing in line to get a visa is never fun, but was wondering if any Americans had experience getting a standard tourist "L" visa in Hong Kong.   I'm leaving on a RTW trip in less than two weeks and I plan on being in China around June. So I either need to get a 6 or 12 month multi-entry visa before I leave the USA - which would entail booking all my flights and accommodation and securing an invitation letter in the next few days - or just fly to Hong Kong before going to China in June.   Hong Kong seems like the simplest answer, but China usually doesn't allow Americans to get visas outside of their home country (HK seems to be an exception). I just wanted to know if any Americans had done it successfully.  Update: The Chinese Visa Office in HK currently has this notice on their website: "If you don't reside or work in Hong Kong permanently, you are required to apply Chinese visa from the Embassy or Consulate-General of Peoples' Republic of China in your resident country." It seems practices may have changed. Any Americans with experience care to contradict this?  Link: Profile page "activity" tab is broken