Help on Relativity for HSC Student from India

[wolram]

I have been asked.

i have just done my hsc from India
can u just help me learn general relativity and tensors and advanced calculus by just giving names of a few books

As i am no expert, can anyone help.

 

[Zanket]

I suggest you skip tensors until you grasp general relativity the easy way, requiring "only algebra, elementary differential calculus, and a handful of integrals" as the book Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity bills itself. Another good book, with hardly any math, is Relativity Visualized.

 

[Neitrino]

"Relativity Visualized" it is a title of the book? Who are the authors?

 

[robphy]

A great (but apparently overlooked) introductory/intermediate book is
Flat and Curved Space-Times
by George F. R. Ellis, Ruth M. Williams

If you google its ISBN, 0198506562 ,
you can see some of the pages from the text.
Near the top, click on "Flat and Curved Space-Times - by George F. R. Ellis, Ruth M. Williams - 375 pages"

 

[Zanket]

"Relativity Visualized" it is a title of the book? Who are the authors?

Yes. Lewis Carroll Epstein. It's called "eccentric" by the authors of the other book, Exploring Black Holes.

 

[pervect]

I have been asked.

i have just done my hsc from India
can u just help me learn general relativity and tensors and advanced calculus by just giving names of a few books

As i am no expert, can anyone help.

I'd look at the sci.physics.realtivity booklist

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Administrivia/rel_booklist.html

I've heard a lot of good things about Schutz's book on this list, but I haven't read it myself.

 

[Mortimer]

I did general relativity as an autodidact myself and may have some experience in finding resources without any help from outside. I first did SR of course. I downloaded lots of resources from the web, mostly lecture notes from various universities. Despite all this free info I found that a good textbook is an absolute necessity, so I bought:
Foster&Nightingale: A short course in General Relativity

I first did tensor calculus by studying the textbook and:
Heinbockel: Introduction to Tensor Calculus and Continuum Mechanics (only part 1) (http://www.math.odu.edu/~jhh/counter2.html)
S. Waner: Introduction to Differential Geometry & General Relativity (http://people.hofstra.edu/faculty/Stefan_Waner/diff_geom/tc.html )

Then on to GR itself with the textbook and:
S. Carroll: Lecture Notes on General Relativity (http://pancake.uchicago.edu/~carroll/notes/)
John Baez: General Relativity Tutorial (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/gr/gr.html)
G. 't Hooft: Introduction to general relativity (http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/lectures/genrel.pdf )

These were what I personally thought to be the most interesting sources. There's lots more available but not all of it is suitable for selfstudy.
I also recommend Gerard 't Hooft's page "How to become a good theroretical physicist" (http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html)
He was so kind to add some of my suggestions (and even my name!) to his site.

 

[juvenal]

I also recommend Gerard 't Hooft's page "How to become a good theroretical physicist" (http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html)
He was so kind to add some of my suggestions (and even my name!) to his site.

Nice site!

 

[wolram]

Thankyou all

I hope my friend took my advice, and looked in on the expert advice
given in this forum.

 

[Nereid]

And a big thanks to you wolfram for assisting this person

I don't know if they have sufficient internet access to warrant it, or are confident enough with their (written) English, but why not encourage them to become a PF member?

 

[dextercioby]

Dirac's 70 page textbook [1] is the quickest way to nongeometric GR.After all,Dirac was a field theorist,so no diff.geom. prerequisites.

Daniel.

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[1]P.A.M.Dirac,"General Relativity",1975.(i don't remember the publisher).