Encyclopedia > Principle of least action

  Article Content

Principle of least action

The principle of least action was first formulated by Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, who said that "Nature is thrifty in all its actions". Others who developed the idea included Euler and Leibniz.

The principle of least action led to the development of the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics. Although they are at first more difficult to grasp, they have the advantage that their world-view is more transferable to the frameworks of relativistic and quantum-mechanical[?] physics than that of Newton's laws[?].

This has caused some people to think that this principle is a "deep" principle of physics.

this is a stub article

See also:

External links



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Shinnecock Hills, New York

... New York. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 1,749. Geography Shinnecock Hills is located at 40°53'17" North, 72°27'42" West ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 39.5 ms