Sunday, 4 June 2017

How come fracddtleft(fracpartialripartialqjright)=fracpartialdotripartialqj in Lagrangian mechanics?



It is written in the Goldstein's Classical Mechanics text that ddt(riqj)=˙riqj=k2riqjqk˙qk+2riqjt,

where ˙ri=ddtri=kriqk˙qk+rit.
But it seems to me that there is another term in ˙riqj because of product rule which is kriqk˙qkqj,
which I think is equal to riqj˙qjqj
since qj's are independent among themselves.


Then how come ddt(riqj)=˙riqj ?

Does ˙qjqj=0 ?



Answer



In the Lagrangian formalism position and velocity are considered as independent variables, so indeed ˙qjqj=0. See Calculus of variations -- how does it make sense to vary the position and the velocity independently?



No comments:

Post a Comment

Understanding Stagnation point in pitot fluid

What is stagnation point in fluid mechanics. At the open end of the pitot tube the velocity of the fluid becomes zero.But that should result...