Classical Mechanics

10/15/2007

Stanford class with Leonard Susskind. First class of the semester.

State transformations

Consider a system of states and state transitions. A classical system is deterministic into the future and the past. Here’s a counterexample

The transition backward in time is ambiguous for state 2 since there are two possibilities: back to 1 or 3.

A classical system has one transition “in” and one transition “out” for each state. For a finite set of states, the state of the system cycles in the same order. If a set of states are isolated and cycle among themselves, this is a conservation law.