Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/hnarayanan/sicm

Working through Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics.
https://github.com/hnarayanan/sicm

educational mechanics scheme simulation

Last synced: about 2 months ago
JSON representation

Working through Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics.

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
# Working Through Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics



This repository contains some notes on my progress through [Structure

and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics][sicm] (Second Edition).

This book lies at the intersection of things that matter very much to

me: mechanics, mathematics and computation.



The crew behind this book (and the corresponding code) are a curious

bunch and they have fun exploring their curiosities. They are slowly

becoming my spiritual guides.



These are mostly notes for myself, but it's great if you want to

follow along with:



- [My console logs as I work through the book][gh-sicm-working]

- [My solutions to the exercises in the book][gh-sicm-exercises]



Feel free to [get in touch][hn-email] if you'd like to talk about this

topic or study together.



## Background Material



There are a handful of ways you can access the book:



- You can buy a physical copy of this book [at its official store

page][sicm],

- Read [the freely-available official HTML version][sicm-html], or

- Read [a beautiful unofficial version][sicm-unofficial-html] online.



There is also an MIT OCW course corresponding to it:



- [Classical Mechanics: A Computational Approach by Prof. Gerald

  Sussman and Jack Wisdom][cm-course-sussman-wisdom]



 The material in this course, and hence the numbering used in the

assignments, correspond to the first edition of the book.



The programming language used in this book and the accompanying

library ([Scheme Mechanics or Scmutils][scmutils]) is called

[Scheme][mit-scheme]. If you are interested in learning about it, the

following course (and [related book][sicp]) is excellent:



- [Structure And Interpretation Of Computer Programs by Hal Abelson

   and Gerald Jay Sussman][programming-course-abelson-sussman]



In addition to this, the following courses are also really

interesting:



- [Classical Mechanics by Leonard Susskind][cm-course-susskind]

- [Classical Physics by Venkataraman Balakrishnan][physics-course-balakrishnan]

- [Fundamentals of Physics with Ramamurti Shankar][physics-course-shankar]

- [Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos by Steven Strogatz][physics-course-srogatz]



## Following Along



### Base setup on macOS on Apple Silicon



I happen to work on an Apple Silicon Mac, and part of this repository

is a collection of notes and hacks needed to get [MIT

Scheme][mit-scheme] and [Scmutils][scmutils] working nicely on it.



1. Install [XQuartz][xquartz]. This used to come bundled with Macs

   previously, but now needs to be installed by hand. You will need

   this for graphical output.



   Simply [download the installer][xquartz-installer] (2.8.5 at the time of writing) and

   run it to install.



2. Fetch, unpack and patch recent source code for MIT Scheme. At the

   time of writing, this is version 12.1. For some technical reasons,

   there is no native-code support for Apple Silicon, and you need to

   fetch the SVM1 binaries which work (albeit a little slowly).



   ````

   curl -O https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mit-scheme/stable.pkg/12.1/mit-scheme-12.1-svm1-64le.tar.gz

   tar -xzf mit-scheme-12.1-svm1-64le.tar.gz

   cd mit-scheme-12.1

   curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hnarayanan/sicm/main/patches/mit-scheme-12.1.patch

   patch -p1 < mit-scheme-12.1.patch

   ````



3. Build and install this patched MIT Scheme. You will want to change

   `/path/to/install/scheme/` below to something that makes sense for

   you. Just keep it in mind in subsequent steps.



   ````

   ./configure --prefix=/path/to/install/scheme/

   make

   make install

   ````

4. Adjust some environment variables in `~/.profile` to let your shell

   know about this installation.



   ````

   export DISPLAY=:0

   export PATH=/path/to/install/scheme/bin:${PATH}

   export MITSCHEME_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/install/scheme/lib/mit-scheme-svm1-64le-12.1

   ````



   You can open a new shell and test your installation out. Hooray!



   ````

   mit-scheme

   ````



5. The final step is to fetch and install a recent Scmutils (20230902 at time of writing).



   ````

   curl -O https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/mechanics-system-installation/svm/scmutils-20230902.tar.gz

   tar -xzf scmutils-20230902.tar.gz

   cd scmutils-20230902

   ./install.sh

   ````



   This ends up installing a script (called `mechanics.sh`) that

   starts Scheme and loads Scmutils as it does so. Since it is put in

   the same path that the `mit-scheme` binary was installed in, you

   can just run it from your shell.



   ````

   mechanics.sh

   ````



   Which greets you with the following. Notice the modules loaded on

   the last line. If you see these, it means you have it all working.



   ````

   MIT/GNU Scheme running under OS X

   Type `^C' (control-C) followed by `H' to obtain information about interrupts.



   Copyright (C) 2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

   This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or

   FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.



   Image saved on Saturday September 2, 2023 at 2:29:59 AM

     Release 12.1 || SF || CREF || LIAR/svm1 || SOS || XML || Edwin || X11 || X11-Screen || ScmUtils

   ````



### Integration with GNU Emacs



I also happen to use [GNU Emacs][gnu-emacs], so here is some bonus

material. If you add the following blocks to your Emacs configuration,

they install and configure a package called [Geiser][emacs-geiser]

that gets a nicer [REPL][wiki-repl] for Scheme with scmutils working

within Emacs. This makes hacking along with this book even more fun.



````

(use-package geiser

  :ensure t

  :config

  (setenv "DISPLAY" ":0")

  (setq geiser-active-implementations '(mit)))



(use-package geiser-mit

  :ensure t

  :config

  (setenv "MITSCHEME_HEAP_SIZE" "100000")

  (setenv "MITSCHEME_LIBRARY_PATH" "/path/to/install/scheme/lib/mit-scheme-svm1-64le-12.1")

  (setenv "MITSCHEME_BAND" "mechanics.com")

  (setq geiser-mit-binary "/path/to/install/scheme/bin/mit-scheme"))

````



## License



This learning repository is licensed under the [Creative Commons

Attribution 4.0 International License][license-cc-by].



[cm-course-susskind]: http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses/classical-mechanics/2011/fall

[cm-course-sussman-wisdom]: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/12-620j-classical-mechanics-a-computational-approach-fall-2008/

[emacs-geiser]: https://www.nongnu.org/geiser/

[gh-sicm-exercises]: https://github.com/hnarayanan/sicm/tree/main/exercises

[gh-sicm-working]: https://github.com/hnarayanan/sicm/tree/main/working

[gnu-emacs]: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

[hn-email]: mailto:[email protected]

[license-cc-by]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

[mit-scheme]: https://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/

[physics-course-balakrishnan]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5E4E56893588CBA8

[physics-course-shankar]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE3074A4CB751B2B

[physics-course-strogatz]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbN57C5Zdl6j_qJA-pARJnKsmROzPnO9V

[programming-course-abelson-sussman]: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/

[scmutils]: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/installation.html

[sicm-html]: https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/books_pres_0/9579/sicm_edition_2.zip/book.html

[sicm-unofficial-html]: https://tgvaughan.github.io/sicm/

[sicm]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262028967/structure-and-interpretation-of-classical-mechanics/

[sicp]: https://mitp-content-server.mit.edu/books/content/sectbyfn/books_pres_0/6515/sicp.zip/index.html

[wiki-repl]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read–eval–print_loop

[xquartz-installer]: https://github.com/XQuartz/XQuartz/releases/download/XQuartz-2.8.5/XQuartz-2.8.5.pkg

[xquartz]: https://www.xquartz.org