There are different ways of describing classical mechanics. Each has its individual strength and weaknesses, but in terms of observable predictions, they are all equivalent.
Traditional Roadmap
| Newtonian Mechanics | Newton's laws | |||||||||||||
| Lagrangian Mechanics | Euler-Lagrange equation, Noether's theorem, configuration space | |||||||||||||
| Hamiltonian Mechanics | Hamilton's equation, canonical transformation, generating functions, Noether's theorem in the Hamiltonian formalism, phase space | |||||||||||||
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