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Re: [Phys-l] Linear Air Drag



At first I thought, Gee, an energy principal use that's much simpler than force, but no, if anything, it's more difficult, but as Carl wrote quite heuristic.

Perhaps more difficult, but in the eye of the beholder? More elegant I think is the energy formulation if you can do it (I liked the treatment, Carl). But this brings to mind a question I've never been really totally clear on:

It might seem like this could be generalized in the Lagrangian formulation of classical mechanics. Setting aside whether any particular analysis becomes more or less difficult in this case, I seem to recall from my last reading of Goldstein et al. that the ability to generalize dissipative effects to the Lagrangian formulation was limited. Why is this exactly? I want to remember something about constraints, not in terms of difficulty of analysis, but whether it was even possible to cast *certain* dissipative effects. Is my memory faulty? Discussion?


Stefan Jeglinski