On 01/11/12 17:56, Martin Brown wrote:
Does that mean you were once at Manchester University in the 1970's?
I used to know a few folk at Jodrell and in Kopal's group.

1965-68. Exciting times in astronomy.

[...]
Mechanics in rotating co-ordinates is not 6th-form maths!
Centripetal force as they pedantically called it when I did A level was.

Yes, but that is to do with circular motion in non-rotating
co-ordinates, not with small oscillations in rotating co-ordinates.

Full derivation of general motion in rotating frames was second year
physics although a few problems that required it cropped up sooner.

It was first-year maths for me.

Nor is the general theory of small oscillations.
I am certain the simple and conical pendulum was. I don't think it is
that much of a stretch to the general theory of SHM.

SHM isn't too bad, but here we're looking rather at normal
modes and such-like.

And I am pretty
sure at least in further maths integrating through the DE to get
conservation of energy was taught.

Yes, but that doesn't really help with the stability of the
Trojan points, which are maxima of the [modified] PE.

[...]
At the time I was trying to back solve initial observations of new
comets into orbital elements - I became very impressed that Gauss had
done it by hand in the days before computers.

The calculating skills of [eg] Newton and Gauss are indeed
very impressive. What then surprised me was the primitive state of
numerical analysis at the time, despite the existence of Newton's
and Gauss's methods all over the place. I don't think there is any
corner of NA that has been untouched in the computer era, even in
such elementary areas as multiplication.

What is a bit of a shame is that the OP has not asked any questions.
I guess the complicated thread drift has put him off.

Seems likely -- if he read the group at all, that is. At
about his age, I was reading books on the solar system, the stars,
cosmology, etc. There are surely still some such books aimed at
quite young children -- I'd expect to find an Usborne book, eg,
tho' I haven't looked. I used to enjoy Eddington, but I think the
OP would perhaps need to wait a year or two, and would then find
that however interesting the material was, it's now 80-odd years
out of date and so completely useless. There must be modern
equivalents!

Message to OP: Ask away and we will try to answer a *lot* more
simply.

Right.

--
Andy Walker,
Nottingham.