Suggested reading

There are many introductory textbooks on the calculus of variations, but most of them go into far more mathematical detail that is required for MATH0043. If you'd like to know more of the theory, Gelfand and Fomin's Calculus of Variations is available in the library. A less technical source is chapter 9 of Boas Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences. There are many short introductions to calculus of variations on the web, e.g.

• https://courses.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/view_material/37762
• http://www-users.math.umn.edu/ olver/ln_/cv.pdf
• https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/david.harris/MT30021/30021CalcVarLec.pdf

although all go into far more detail than we need in MATH0043. Lastly, as well as the moodle handout you may find

• http://www.math.harvard.edu/archive/21a_spring_09/PDF/11-08-Lagrange-Multipliers.pdf

useful as a refresher on Lagrange multipliers.