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I am a physics major student who graduated last summer. During my undergrad years and now in my graduate level studies I always worked experimentally. I worked in labs with professors for years. Of course with a moderate amount of studying and with the help of my succesful research career in experimantal optics, I graduated and accepted to the graduate school. I applied for research assistantship and took the exam. Unfortunately I realised that my knowledge and problem solving abilities had become dull over the years. Especially in Classical Mechanics. Could you suggest a book or two for a graduated student who took calculus and a intro. classical mechanics etc. what I mean is I know most of the concepts I don't need to start from the very bottom. I can understand derivations. What I need is a lot of solved examples and exercises with increased difficulty. I know I can't solve a tough problem on my own right now. I just need a guidance. Is there any source that can help me?

Qmechanic
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Rigby
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1 Answers1

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It sounds like A Guide to Physics Problems, Part I and Part II are precisely what you're looking for. These two books are compilations of problems and complete, worked solutions from the graduate qualifying exams of some of the best universities in the world. Part I contains the mechanics, electromagnetism, and relativity sections, while part two goes into statistical mechanics / thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.

The problem range in difficulty from cute and mildly tricky to genuinely very difficult, but they are all unique and interesting. Typically they do not require a lot of sophisticated mathematics - instead, the primary hurdles are conceptual (though of course, being qual programs, there is often no shortage of algebra).

J. Murray
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