Elasticity and Fluid Dynamics

A groundbreaking textbook on twenty-first-century fluids and elastic solids and their applications.

Kip Thorne and Roger Blandford's monumental Modern Classical Physics is now available in five stand-alone volumes that make ideal textbooks for individual graduate or advanced undergraduate courses on statistical physics; optics; elasticity and fluid dynamics; plasma physics; and relativity and cosmology. Each volume teaches the fundamental concepts, emphasises modern, real-world applications, and gives students a physical and intuitive understanding of the subject.

Elasticity and Fluid Dynamics provides an essential introduction to these subjects. Fluids and elastic solids are everywhere—from Earth's crust and skyscrapers to ocean currents and airplanes. They are central to modern physics, astrophysics, the Earth sciences, biophysics, medicine, chemistry, engineering, and technology. This centrality has intensified in recent years—so much so that a basic understanding of the behaviour of elastic solids and fluids should be part of the repertoire of every physicist and engineer, and almost every other natural scientist.

While both elasticity and fluid dynamics involve continuum physics and use similar mathematical tools and modes of reasoning, each subject can be readily understood without the other. The book allows them to be taught independently, with the first two chapters introducing and covering elasticity and the last six doing the same for fluid dynamics. It can also serve as supplementary reading for many other courses, including in astrophysics, geophysics, and aerodynamics.

• Includes many exercise problems
• Features colour figures, suggestions for further reading, extensive cross-references, and a detailed index
• Optional 'Track 2' sections make this an ideal book for a one-quarter or one-semester course in elasticity, fluid dynamics, or continuum physics
• An online illustration package is available to professors