The Lazy Universe: An Introduction to the Principle of Least Action [Hardback]

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The Principle of Least Action underlies all physics and leads into quantum mechanics and Einstein's Relativity. There are some textbooks that do the calculations, and one book with nice pictures, but no book (before this one) that explains what 'action' is, and why nature follows this principle.

Jennifer Coopersmith took her PhD in nuclear physics from the University of London, and was later a research fellow at TRIUMF, University of British Columbia. She was for many years an associate lecturer for the Open University (London and Oxford), and was then a tutor on astrophysics courses at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne while based at La Trobe University in Bendigo, Victoria. She now lives in France.

1 Introduction; 2 Antecedents; 3 Mathematics and physics preliminaries; 4 The Principle of Virtual Work; 5 D'Alembert's Principle; 6 Lagrangian Mechanics; 7 Hamiltonian Mechanics; 8 The whole of physics; 9 Final words; Appendices; A1.1 Newton's Laws of Motion; A3.1 Reversible Displacements; A2.1 Protraits of the physicists; A6.1 Worked examples in Langrangian Mechanics; A6.2 Proof that T is a function of v2; A6.3 Energy coservation and the homogeneity of time; A6.4 The method of Lagrange Multiples; A6.5 Generalized Forces; A7.1 Hamilton's Transformation, Examples; A7.2 Demonstration tha the pis are independent coordinates; A7.3 Worked examples in Hamiltonian Mechanics; A7.4 Incompressibility of the phase fluid; A7.5 Energy conservation in extended phase space; A7.6 Link between the action, S, and the 'circulation'; A7.7 Transformation equations linking p and q via S; A7.8 Infinitesimal canonical transformations; A7.9 Perpendicularity; A7.10 Problems solved using the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation; A7.11 Quasi refractive index in mechanics; A7.12 Einstein's link between Action and the de Broglie waves