No_Tumbleweed_8157 t1_j6nmpck wrote on January 31, 2023 at 4:45 PM

Reply to comment by Shamon_Yu in Classical mechanics is the only branch of physics where engineers generally have more expertise than physicists themselves. by Shamon_Yu

I guess it’s fair to say that Physicists will try to solve a PDE in cartesian space by parameterizing and reducing to an ODE in polar space where r could be constant.

I know Engineers are also usually happy to solve a problem graphically or by implicit forms. There are also times where engineers will just use one term of the small angle approximation and preemptively set bounds on the radius of convergence to θ<10°. (That’s fair, because an out of bounds θ means a bending modulus has already passed a buckling limit and the system is borked)

I don’t think it’s fair to say Physics student Classical Dynamics doesn’t use PDEs, though, especially since checking Lagrangian invariance of solutions only works for PDEs.