Thursday, September 27, 2018

lagrangian formalism - Confusing with the equation (2.4) and (2.5) of Landau and Lifshitz, Mechanics, Chapter 1, The principle of Least Action


I'm a 12th Grader and I'm interested in Lagrangian Mechanics and having a bit of knowledge about the Newtonian Mechanics. So, I found a book of Landau and Lifshitz's Mechanics and started reading from the very first chapter, but I've encountered some serious doubts here!


I'm just writing the symbol/variable meaning and conventions here first!


For instance, let's imagine a particle. q is it's radius vector magnitude (it's scalar), ˙q is the derivative of position vector or velocity (scalar), t as time duration, S as action.



So, S=t2t1L(q,˙q,t)dt.


Let variation of function be δq(t), so now


δq(t1)=δq(t2)=0


δS=t2t1L(q+δq,˙q+δ˙q,t)dtt2t1L(q,˙q,t)dt=0.


So, after the next few lines, it changes to:


δS=δt2t1L(q,˙q,t)dt=0.


This is doubtful as δ isn't a number which can be multiplied both sides of equal sign both ways,


(Lqδq+L˙qδ˙q)dt=0.


From which multiverse the above thing in concluded even I can't understand after hours of thinking, please help me with these concepts.





Ref: https://archive.org/details/Mechanics_541/page/n11




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