Explaining the Principle of Least Action: Physics Mini Lesson
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- čas přidán 24. 10. 2021
- The principle of least action is a different way of looking at physics that has applications to everything from Newtonian mechanics, to relativity, quantum mechanics, and beyond. Get the notes for free here: courses.physicswithelliot.com...
Take my full course on Lagrangian mechanics: courses.physicswithelliot.com...
Get all the links here: www.physicswithelliot.com/lea...
This video is the first part of a series about the principle of least action, explaining the action for a particle in Newtonian mechanics. The second is about a particle in special relativity, the third about a particle in general relativity, and the fourth about the action for a string in string theory.
Part 2 The action in special relativity: • The Special Relativist...
Part 3 The action in general relativity: • How Einstein Uncovered...
Part 4 The action for string theory: • The First Thing You'll...
Review of potential energy: • The Trick that Makes U...
Example of solving a problem with the Lagrangian: • Lagrangian and Hamilto...
Tutoring inquiries: www.physicswithelliot.com/tut...
If you find the content I’m creating valuable and would like to help make it possible for me to continue sharing more, please consider supporting me! You can make a recurring contribution at / physicswithelliot , or make a one time contribution at www.physicswithelliot.com/sup.... Thank you so much!
About physics mini lessons:
In these intermediate-level physics lessons, I'll try to give you a self-contained introduction to some fascinating physics topics. If you're just getting started on your physics journey, you might not understand every single detail in every video---that's totally fine! What I'm really hoping is that you'll be inspired to go off and keep learning more on your own.
About me:
I’m Dr. Elliot Schneider. I love physics, and I want to help others learn (and learn to love) physics, too. Whether you’re a beginner just starting out with your physics studies, a more advanced student, or a lifelong learner, I hope you’ll find resources here that enable you to deepen your understanding of the laws of nature. For more cool physics stuff, visit me at www.physicswithelliot.com. - Věda a technologie
As a mathematician, your content is some of the best I have ever seen. I love getting my teeth into the equations and proofs, and I love seeing stuff like this as well as your introduction to string theory video. Keep it up!
Thank you so much William!
If you want to see actual theorems with all the hypotheses stated, read Arnold's book "Mathematical Methods of classical mechanics." I think there is some truth that it's best to learn physics from mathematicians, and vice versa. :P
Totally agree with, as a mathematician!
@@ewwseww Sure, but how about As A Millionaire?
;-)
@@PhysicswithElliot I am not a mathematician and I took calculus a long time ago. But I can relate to some issues in your video. I cannot understand starting at 6 minute mark. The tiny distance epsilon from minimum x is still a tiny amount away from x with no slope but at point x + epsilon has a slope. And then after ''higher order correction'' - which is something I never heard - of the right side of equation (by your words) f prime equals zero, the tiny x+epsilon vanishes. My physics teacher said that ''one cannot fool nature''. And by your explantion if the graph is a - let's say a trajectory of a partilcle with respect to (t), the distance of a particle with respect to time cannot vanish.
"The Principle of Least Action" ~ The Feynman Lectures, Vol. II, Ch. 19
Richard Feynman inserts a "WOW! That's cool!" lecture in the middle of his electromagnetism lectures. It starts with a personal account of how he was introduced to this idea.
I came across this before getting formally introduced to Lagrangian Mechanics.
Thank goodness for all the genius minds that have contributed to this wonderful subject and all the amazing teachers like this guy. I am so excited to get to grips with this and more!!
Wonderfully clean. I’ve seen this proof many times - and only this one connects all the dots effortlessly to why we are even doing this in the first place.
Thank you so much! This and its companion videos were the clearest and most understandable explanation of the PoLA and world lines, plus special and general relativity that I have watched, and I watched a *lot*! The math was perfect and well chosen, easily followed, well done!
I've always wondered to know things related to physics but what pulled me out to learn was that i was more interested in mathematics without applications aka pure maths. But to be really honest you're a saviour for me in that case. I love the way you explain things. Thank you so much for being there and a very happy new year from my side. More health to you.
Thanks Amrit! Glad it helped!
Your videos are always very well done. Thank you.
A nice treatment of this topic. Very much enjoyed it!
Elliot. 🎉. Wonderful! You explain things so clearly. You have a clear mind. You get straight to the point. You are concise. You enunciate with precision. And some of the material I have been exposed to, and did not understand very well, I understand better now. More please …. Thanks so much!
Dr, please make a whole lecture series on Classical Mechanics (all of Lagrangian, variational calculus , Hamiltonians , phase space and all of it)
This is the rarest thing in the whole online universe.
A request from Bangladesh 🖤🇧🇩
I'm working on a course covering Lagrangian mechanics!
This channel is a gem
Thank you Elliot!
Your videos are extremely helpful!
Thanks for your video, they are very logical and simpler to understand, they have make me have another perspective to understand about the mechanics for my freshman year to learn deeper understanding in physics. Thank you!
Glad to hear it Jim!
Great way to tackle this kind of topics, keep it up man
Thanks Jack!
Dr. Elliot -- you're a mensch. Thank you for these very clear and visually intuitive videos. I'm not a physicist or a mathematician (my science background is mostly molecular biology). However, I'm trying to learn modern physics on the side and your vids coupled with Sean Carroll and Lenny Susskind's are VERY helpful.
Thank you, I learned this during my time at Duke but had forgotten about it :) Now it's back, very well explained!
Brilliantly well explained. Thanks.
Good stuff! I've never heard this account before. I can't wait for the relativistic generalizations!!!
Come and get 'em!
Special relativity czcams.com/video/KVk1QNTWBxQ/video.html
General relativity czcams.com/video/h2SEK6Jjv3Y/video.html
@@PhysicswithElliot Sweet!!! I’ll watch immediately!!!
Excellent video brother, you just gained a subscriber !
Thank you is not enough. ❤ man to man. May he bless you in every good deed you do in every second of it along you life time.
path of least "action"- story of my life
Fantastic lecture. subscribed. Thank you.
at 11:25 the change in L equation is missing a second dot above the first x
awesome class. Thank you.
thanks for making this channel!
Wonderful. I'm grateful.
I like mathematical formalism of physics...this formalism is like a beautiful poetry indeed .
Your channel is fascinating because you have explained advanced topics very lucidly.
Thanks Rajarshi!
LOVE THIS!!!!! Thank you
Excellent work!
Thanks Michael!
I really enjoyed your video... Tnx I learned a lot...
very good content. I love physics :)
Great. I hit a gold mine in you tube.
thank you so much very simple 🤩
I love this channel
Hey! Nice video thank you.
I just dont get why you can make the epsilon^2 disappear like that?
I know you've gotten a million comments on your videos all saying the same thing, but I don't care, here's one more.
I just got my BS in mathematics but I want to go to grad school for physics and so I am now self-studying physics to try and accomplish this. You are seriously one of the best teachers I have ever come across. Given that there are literally thousands of physics/math lectures and videos online, and that I have seen a ton of them over the years, this truly puts you in a category with the best of them. It's such a privilege to be able to access this kind of content outside of a college classroom, and it's an absolute miracle that people like you make it available for free. You've earned yourself a Patreon supporter and a lifetime subscriber, sir!
I truly thank you for work ✊
@jlinks908 I totally agree, there are sooo many teachers out there and (I appreciate all of their efforts!) so there exists an average effectiveness in concept delivery. Elliot's offerings really highlight the fact that most hover around the average. I didn't really notice too much until I saw a couple of his videos but he does such a good job of making these concepts accessible through the right balance of visual aids and strong delivery of clear information. @Elliot: really mean that, you've elevated the field for all! Good on you!
OMG, I finally understand ❤❤❤
Un modelo de elegancia matematica y virtuosismo didactico.
Muchas gracias
Gracias Carlos!
Great articulation of a complex topic. What is the app you use to build your presentations?
Lovely made-easy intro to Least Action in the "least complicated" way Mr. Elliot. I have only heard this term before vaguely.
This makes me want to know if this "Principle of Least Action" is related to Fermat's "Principle of Least Time"- which expplains Snell's Laws of refraction elegantly. Could you please make a video on this also?
Thanks Rajagopal!
Fermat's principle was the basis for the principle of least action.
Furthermore, Huygens' principle leads to Feynman's path integral formulation of quantum mechanics.
I have been looking for this video(s) for-ever. Finally they found me! Thank you so much. Just two micro questions:
1) dt at the beginning of the integrand expression is peculiar of this branch of maths?
2) what software are you using to draw? Tried several computer+tablet combinations, but this looks better than most of them
Thank you again!
with regards to "dt at the beginning of the integrand expression is peculiar of this branch of maths?". This is simply a style of integral notation, often used by physicists or just people who are taking integrals with respect to many variables. It can be nicer to work with, as you immediately see what variable is being used for the integration. I personally don't use it, but I know people who do.
Can you explain why the standard Lagrangian is T-U? Intuitively, why that specific form (other than 'because it works')? Thanks
what a great compliment to Landaus book
Will you please also make video on linear algebra and group theory?
Fantastic explanation. One question: towards the end when you say “assign a number to each possible path”, aren’t there technically an uncountable number of paths?
@PhysicswithElliot What experimental evidence is there to suggest that the path integral formulation is correct? By this I mean, what evidence is there to "show" that the particle traverses all paths? Also could you include the experimental evidence in your future videos along with the name of the experiment or researcher who first did the experiment?
Hello. 3 questions:
Why would the particle follow the minimazing action S trajectory?
What is the physical content of the minimum action S?
What is the physical content of an any value action S?
Thanks!
This is touched on at the end, starting at 13:50.
Nice video :)
at 10:01, don't get why E(t1) and E(t2) should be zero? Can you please clarify more simply?
Principle of least action: they finally made a physics theory that reflects my life
Actually, as far as know the action should be an extreme (maximum or minumum), it does not need to be necessarily a minimum, but in most of cases it is a minimum. At least in classical mechanics they claim for that. May I correct? Thank you!
Thanks for this great video and your clear explanations. A doubt in the development of the equations:
(7:47)... I understand that e squared vanishes, but why does edot squared vanish too? Even in your picture, the difference between the "red" and "blue" trajectories (e) changes sharply with time.
So, edot squared vanishes as a consequence that e is small or as a consequence that a trajectory close to the "optimal" one is characterized both by e small AND edot small?
Thanks David! You could instead write the variation as x(t) -> x(t) + c f(t) where c is a small parameter and f(t) is any function that vanishes at the endpoints. Then the requirement is that the change in the action under this transformation is zero to order c. When I wrote \epsilon(t) I've essentially absorbed this small parameter into the variation, and then counting powers of \epsilon or its derivatives is equivalent to counting powers of c.
@@PhysicswithElliot Thanks for your clear and kind answer.
Does the least action principle only relate to a trajectory, but not the speed along the path?
It should only govern the path (if we compare a ball bouncing vertically and a yo-yo toy, they have the same path, but different speed along the path). Im I right?
The statement that the action is minimized (or maximized) is refuted by the counter-example of a statue sitting in a temple for a thousand years: Temporarily moving the statue up to the roof or down to the basement for a sufficiently long time (say another thousand years) before returning it to the pedestal will change the action by an arbitrarily large amount in either direction (as the potential energy change gets integrated for an arbitrarily long time), dwarfing the finite change in action that occurs while the statue-moving company is on site.
Furthermore, it is worth mention that in classical mechanics, what one really uses is the fact that the Euler-Lagrange equations are unchanged by changes of variables. This can be proved simply using the chain rule for derivatives, without recourse to the calculus of variations and any accompanying unnecessary assumptions. (Such a proof isn't a derivation, but it can remove any doubts in the more mathematically-inclined students, who may simply loose all interest at the first sign of unstated or missing hypotheses or lack of mathematical rigor.)
That's amazing...
The reason why light goes straight is that all the path that light selected at the same time is cancelled out except the least action path.
Only straight line survived....
10:00 can somebody plz explain me why epsilon t1 and epsilon t2 are zero?
Really good video but a quick question: At 5:30 in the def of s (in green) is the, "dt" in the wrong place?
Not sure what you mean!
The dt can go before the integrand. It's pretty standard in physics and makes multiple integral easier to interpret (at least it did for me)
While Leonard Susskind's 10 part series on Classical Mechanics was good, it was too long winded at nearly 2hrs per lecture! . Dr. Elliot's series is excellent which covers a wonderful understanding of the exact same equations and derivations in less than an hour!
Thk you for your clarity of explanation;
I never could understand the classic laws of thermodynamics especially the ?entropy? ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics#Laws_of_thermodynamics ).
?Does least-action a better description of thermodynamics than classical thermodynamics especially the dreaded ?entropy? .
What will happen for the classical Action in the following experiment: a particle that travels in a line and have a perfect ellastic collision with a wall (1D position vs time function).... it will travel back, so it first derivative will have a bounded "jump discontinuity", that will become a singularity in the second derivative...How will be the action principle work in this scenario?
The kinetic energy doesn't change when the particle reflects off the wall, so it won't have any effect on the action
Is that a uv lamp there ??
7:37 You appear to be assuming that not only ε but also dε/dt is a very small number. Is this correct?
We could use λε(t) instead of ε(t) where λ is a constant set small enough so that d(λ(ε(t))/dt (= λd(ε(t))/dt ) is very small for all t.
Thanks a lot for the very well presented videos. I have subscribed.
Yes you can say it like that
Can someone tell me where the U’(x)ε comes from at 7:49?
That's Taylor Series expansion of U(x+e) = U(x) +U'(x)e
Could you show the detail math of an actual problem?. The equations for y = -x^2 + 5 and the equation y = x^2-8 intersect. the graph shows one path longer than the other. Could you use these 2 equations and show the details. thank you for the video. I've been trying to understand this for a while. I'm almost 80 and would really appreciate the help.
Just got into principles of least action. From my 10 year old Son asking me about ballistics. If the basics of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity were derived from the same least action principle, why are they at odds with each other?
Why do forces have to be derivative of u? I'm trying to focus on myself.
Bruh
well U is potential energy so from school you can convert it into work which is W=∑F∆s=U (see integral instead of sum :) ). So to get F you simply compute derivative of ∂U/∂s = F
15:24 If we break apart the bracket on the left, we get called ket. Put together we have a braket (bracket). Who said Physicists don't have a sense of humor? 😀
This might be a dump question, but how does an elementary particle know what minimum action is/ shortest path is? We can deduce it by taking the integral on all possible paths, but how does a particle know? Doesn’t that require a particle to travel along all possible paths to find out?
It doesn't "know". Physics (the possible ways a body or particle can behave) dictates/limits it will behave that way
Great content!
So forces are just a glitch in human perspective?
I wouldn't say that. It's not like an optical illusion. "Forces" is a legitimate way of thinking about human-scale phenomena. It just doesn't work well for the very large or very small.
You are my idol bro 💔
Perhaps YT comments is an unlikely place to look for an answer like this but, this explanation (which is great and similar to the same I had when I saw QM for the first time) implies that your functional (in this case your Lagrangian) is a function of only analytical functions. Which then excludes all other non-analytical functions solutions... Anyone can try to explain this to me?
When the trajectory isn't smooth the action typically blows up. Singular trajectories are of interest in quantum mechanics though
@@PhysicswithElliot thanks for the answer but not being smooth is not the only case. The classic function e^1/x2 is for example infinitely differentiable (expect at 0 of course) and not analytical. I see this on DFT as well. A bunch of assumptions of Functionals being well behaved and an some "arbitrary" considerations (for the sake of simplicity) that exclude several classes of possible solutions. My Mathematics side is in pain while my engineering/Physicist side says if I don't make those considerations then I don't have any hope of answering those questions in the first place...
Hello from Czech republic, I guess the time will run out until you notice with this amount of subs, but I have to try... I have exam in theoretical physics tomorrow, could you please explain to me why are higher powers of ε in taylor and generally also in other parts of the integral not relevant for the final result? Thank you very much for your time if you notice
Hi Jakub-- It's very similar to finding the minimum of an ordinary function; you're looking for the point where the first derivative vanishes. In the Taylor series, f(x+dx) = f(x) + f'(x) dx + ..., the first derivative shows up in the linear term, so that's the one we want to pick out.
@@PhysicswithElliot Thank you very much, God bless you.
Vsauce didn’t describe this well (yet) but this video did
👍
Isn't this basically first law of thermodynamics?
7:40 why??
As always Lagrange pulls the Newtonian rabbit out of the hat.
What I have never understood is why Lagrange ever suspected that his hat might contain such a rabbit.
Even before Newton, scholars already knew that light rays obeyed a similar principle. That is, they took the path with least travel time (Fermat did a lot of work on this.) Lagrange wanted to generalize this idea to all matter, and probably just tinkered until he found a way to do it.
@@nicholasthesilly
I wish my own tinkering was so fruitful.
can somebody explain me 9:08
coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool
Still crazy after all these years. Need this though: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integration_by_parts
It's just the integral counterpart to the derivative product rule.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
nice lecture but i cant get the real essence of least action. still i don't understand
Waoooo!
The Principle of Most Action is moshing your way around a nightclub or stadium.
10:22 0 or 1? make up your mind.
Even i don't understand why should that be 0. ?? 1 makes sense .. as then the integral over epsilon would vanish regardless of the value of start and end 't'.
Your wonderfully clear and admirable explanations are very enlightening but the speed of delivery is dizzying; your brain is on fire! I just try to hold on and enjoy the ride.
You looks like elliot
I don't understand why
It's a law of nature.
There is no Why.
@@paulboro5278 why nature has this law?
@@paulboro5278 why there is no why?
"Minimize is too strong of a word"------In fact, the claim of least action is actually wrong. Why propagate misconceptions? Simplicity makes a nice story, but a miss is a miss, and "minimization" is known to be wrong. The best that can be claimed is stationarity.
Let me tell you about a fundamental principle of pedagogy: The Principle of Fewest Expository Anachronisms. One result that falls out of this is that you don’t base an entire presentation on a concept for which the audience has no objective or intuitive understanding. Where did the Lagrangian and the Principle of Least Action come from? I’m quite certain that neither Lagrange nor Euler consulted Feynman’s Ph.D. thesis, thank you very much.
After that, if you want to present a useful example, why don’t you address one where mass varies. (e.g.; a rocket)
Thanks for the video. At czcams.com/video/sUk9y23FPHk/video.html you change from K+U to K-U as you introduce the Lagrangian. Please can you tell us why it is important for us now to subtract the potential.
K+U is the total energy. You can also derive the equations of motion from there, which leads to the Hamiltonian formulation of mechanics as opposed to the Lagrangian formulation. Check out the earlier video I made comparing the different approaches if you haven't seen it: czcams.com/video/0DHNGtsmmH8/video.html
10:22 I thought 0! was 1??? JK
Even i don;t understand why should that be 0. ?? 1 makes sense .. as then the integral over epsilon would vanish regardless of the value of start and end 't'.
You don't explain why Lagrangian is defined as T-U, and not something else. This is the true understanding of what's going on here...
How would you answer that question?
@@FB0102 "the margins of this book are too narrow to write it down here..."
@@gaHuJIa_Macmep Oh, it fits. Its quite straightforward :)
You may think what you know what any of this means, you do not
You are entirely wrong on the principles
One day I hope to be able to show you exactly why
Clumsy explainer. At the outset keeps switching the independent variable between t and x.
It's all nice, but we don't ask "how the ball gets from here to there". We ask "where will the ball go if i kick it this hard". Especially if the ball is orbiting a star so it doesn't have a destination. All explanations of Action assume we already know the end result and only want to know how we get there...
It does so happen that, in absence of stuff like friction, the dynamical problem with initial conditions (Newton) coincides with the dynamical problem stated as a boundary value problem (action principle).
This idea of all paths being followed sounds a lot like the "multiverse". Perhaps cosmologists should step away from the telescope for a bit and look in the microscope instead.
Good effort, but as far as levels of understanding of Math and Physics are concerned, this is all over the place. Neither an an introductory Physics nor Algebra / beginning of Calculus student would understand any of this. What good does this do if you preach to 3rd or 4th year university students?
This one definitely requires calculus background!
This video served as a good refresher on these physical principles. While I’m not going to grad school quite yet, I’ll definitely be back on this channel to brush up on my physics concepts.
Even then, watching him slowly go through the material is much more digestible than being presented with a wall of text as in a textbook. It makes it easier for the brain to pick stuff out. As long as students have prerequisite knowledge in calculus, they should be able to absorb what’s going on, even if they don’t understand why quite yet.
I think that that is a rather harsh assessment. Usually kids are taught by rote on how to do things with little explanation for why. The same is true of the structure of graduate courses where subject matter is aggregated for no apparent reason except that it made sense to the course designers. I find that these presentations provide context. If you have the context then you can begin to understand the 'for why'. A lot of graduates leave college without any real understanding of what they have just been through. A minute longer on Euler-Lagrange would have been welcomed but apart from that I think it quite fair to expect any 19 year old to understand the content.
I completely disagree, in my opinion its one of the rare video lectures online that are concise, follow a very structured flow from initial assumptions to conclusions with very few (much needed) digressions that tend to explain questions I would be asking myself in that point of the video actually.
Also mathematics required is quite basic for physics curriculum. I have a MSc in electrical engineering and am quite capable of following this derivation of Lagrangian (had to pause once or twice), which to be honest, I cant say for most of them. (and I watched A LOT of them, including entire L. Suskinds lesson series)
As every other video series, it has its intended audience, if your level of mathematics is not sufficient to understand it, you should revisit all the prerequisite knowledge and then come back to tackle this.
There is beauty in discovering the connections. I'm an engineer, fascinated by physics. I haven't learnt Largrangian / advanced QM rigorously. This video makes sense to me and it's really fascinating to see them coming together.
His target audience aren't people looking to learn this from scratch. He's showing the beautiful parts which most aren't aware of.
The principle of least action just proves that nature is as lazy as we are, processes are going to happen in a way that takes the least action possible. In other words, why walk to the store when I can drive? 🤣
When I don't do the projects on my wife's "honey do" list, I explain to her that the principle of least action forces me to do nothing since that is the least action, in other words it's not my fault it is a law of the universe. By the way, it does not work, I still have to do the projects on the list, which proves that Physics does not apply in married life. LOL