The classical three-body problem arose in an attempt to understandthe effect of the Sun on the Moon’s Keplerian orbitaround the Earth. It has attracted the attention of some of thebest physicists and mathematicians and led to the discoveryof ‘chaos’. We survey the three-body problem in its historicalcontext and use it to introduce several ideas and techniquesthat have been developed to understand classical mechanicalsystems.

A rigid body accelerated through a frictionless fluid appearsto gain mass. Swimmers, air bubbles, submarines and airshipsare slowed down by the associated ‘added mass’ forcewhich is distinct from viscous drag and buoyancy. In particlephysics, an otherwise massless electron, quark, W or Z boson,moving through the Higgs field acquires a mass. In thisarticle, we introduce the fluid mechanical added mass effectthrough examples and use its analogy with the Higgs mechanismto intuitively explain how the carriers of the weak force(W and Z bosons) get their masses while leaving the photonmassless.