ABSTRACT
On July 5, 1687, Isaac Newton published a three-volume work titled Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Students spending big money on physics textbooks this year might consider photocopying pages from Newton’s book instead (and brushing up on their Latin), because most of what Newton figured out centuries ago is still just as true today. His three laws of motion are part of a broader field known as classical mechanics. Do not be fooled by the ancient-sounding nameclassical mechanics works for apples or Apple computers. Even calculus, which Newton invented to help him develop his theories, is perfectly pertinent. So too are the approaches to classical mechanics developed in the ensuing centuries by the likes of Lagrange, Hamilton, d’Alembert, and Maxwell.
