Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (SICM) is a classical mechanics textbook written by Gerald Jay Sussman and Jack Wisdom with Meinhard E. Mayer. The first edition was published by MIT Press in 2001, and a second edition was released in 2015. The book is used at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach a class in advanced classical mechanics, starting with Lagrange's equations and proceeding through canonical perturbation theory.[1][2]
 | |
| Author | Gerald Jay Sussman and Jack Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Subject | Classical mechanics |
| Publisher | MIT Press |
Publication date | 2001 |
| Publication place | United States |
SICM explains some physical phenomena by showing computer programs for simulating them.[3] These programs are written in the Scheme programming language, as were the programs in Sussman's earlier computer science textbook, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.
Sussman wrote:
Classical mechanics is deceptively simple. It is surprisingly easy to get the right answer with fallacious reasoning or without the real understanding. To address this problem Jack Wisdom and I, with help from Hardy Mayer, have written [Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics] and are teaching a class at MIT that uses computational techniques to communicate a deeper understanding of Classical mechanics. We use computational algorithms to express the methods used to analyze dynamical phenomena. Expressing the methods in a computer language forces them to be unambiguous and computationally effective. Formulating a method as a computer-executable program and debugging that program is a powerful exercise in the learning process. Also, once formalized procedurally, a mathematical idea becomes a tool that can be used directly to compute results.[4]
The entire text is freely available online from the publisher's website.[5]
Editions
edit- Sussman, Gerald Jay; Wisdom, Jack; Mayer, Meinhard E. (2001). Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN?0262194554. OCLC?45223598.
- Sussman, Gerald Jay; Wisdom, Jack (6 February 2015). Structure and interpretation of classical mechanics (Second?ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN?9780262028967. OCLC?905916340.
References
edit- ^ Hut, Piet (2025-08-07). "Book Review: Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics". Foundations of Physics. 32 (2): 323–326. doi:10.1023/a:1014417411545. ISSN?0015-9018. S2CID?117948062.
- ^ "Classical Mechanics: A Computational Approach". CSAIL. Retrieved 2025-08-07.
- ^ Hayes, Brian (2002). "Matter in Motion". American Scientist. 90 (3): 278–279. JSTOR?27857667.
- ^ Sussman, Gerald Jay (2025-08-07). "EECS Event: Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics". Archived from the original on 2025-08-07. Retrieved 2025-08-07.
- ^ "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics". MIT Press. Retrieved 2025-08-07.
External links
edit- Publisher page with open access link on publisher site; direct link to HTML from there.
- Full text in HTML (first edition) on co-author Gerald Sussman's site
- OCW MIT OpenCourseWare class materials for course 6.946, Fall 2008.