The texts, software, and references this book actually draws on, for readers who want to go deeper or set up their own environment.
Primary texts¶
The notes and homework cite these throughout, particularly from Unit 5 onward:
Taylor, J. R. Classical Mechanics (University Science Books) — the main reference for equations of motion, conservation laws, and stability.
Strogatz, S. H. Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos (CRC Press) — referenced in the Unit 11 notes and Homework 6 for the calculus of variations and nonlinear/chaotic systems.
Neither is required to read this book, but both are good next steps if a topic needs more depth than the notebooks provide.
Software¶
Every activity and homework notebook runs on the standard scientific Python stack:
Jupyter — the notebook format the entire course is written in.
NumPy — array math and vectorized computation.
Matplotlib — the plotting library used for every phase portrait, trajectory, and time series in the book.
SciPy, especially
scipy.integrate.solve_ivp— the ODE solver introduced in Unit 10 for chaotic systems and used in later homework.MyST Markdown — builds this site from the notebooks and Markdown pages. Useful if you’re contributing content or want to build the site locally (see the README).
Further reading¶
Wikipedia: Classical Mechanics and the topic-specific Wikipedia articles linked throughout the notes — used as quick background reading in nearly every unit.
arXiv — linked from a few homework sets (Units 4 and 6) for primary research on the systems being modeled.
Have a resource that helped you understand a topic in this book? Add it here and open a pull request on the GitHub repository.