2015-01-22 Lecture 2

Reading: Chapter 5, up to page 192.Sections 5.7 – 5.9 will not be on the homework or exams, but will be part ofthe assigned reading.

Functional relationships between several variables will be a major theme throughout the course. Today wewill look at the cases of two variables and threevariables.

Three variables: a, b and c

Example: Work out derivatives for c = a^2 + b^2

Two variables: a and b. We have da/db = 1/(db/da)

Example: Work out derivatives for b = tan(a)

We apply this to x(t) and t(x), one-dimensional motion in U(x)