Roger Penrose's book

Daverz

An online reading discussion might be a bit like herding cats, but I'd like to see them for various books. I've always had an ambition to read through ALL of MTW for example.

Put me down as interested. I don't even have the book yet, but it's cheap enough used.

The paperback is coming out in January. Wonder if that'll have corrections.

interested_learner

Dr. Penrose has wonderful insights, but you have to understand the material at some level before you can understand his book.

You are not going to learn the math and physics from the "Road to Reality" unless you are some kind of genius. If you have completed complex analysis and tensors, you probably can struggle through it. Topology and Diff geometry would help too. In that sense it is a lot like Feynman's books. Learn your physics and math first and then go back and read them.

robphy

The homepage http://www.roadsolutions.ox.ac.uk/
says "Please note that the corrections page has been updated 26/09/06" and points to
http://www.roadsolutions.ox.ac.uk/corrections.html
which says "NEW CORRECTIONS (incorporated into new paperback editions from 2007)"

I will have to print out this page and staple it to my hard cover edition.

MadScientist 1000

Too big for 13 year olds... I only got to the Pythogarous Theorum before it good too confusing.

PhilosophyofPhysics

http://www.roadsolutions.ox.ac.uk/solutions.html

Some solutions are finally up.

Algo Man

The Book by Dr. Roger Penrose who is greatest mathematician of our times who has more than 40-50 years of research in the field of mathematics and physics. He is the pioneer of Black Holes Mechanics, Twistor Theory and many such theories. I personally feel that the book Road To Reality by such a luminary is a boon to humanity. I know there are many who would think otherwise but this book is no child's play like Brief History of Time or even Elegant Universe but requires that reader should have a strong mathematical background ranging from calculus to topology to algebra to manifolds and based on that it deals with all of current as well as previous physics research. However everybody should be forewarned not to touch the work unless you are competent in mathematics or you will not understand a thing but if you can spare time then there is a jewel in each line and each page of this mammoth work. Regards K

Shaun Culver

If anybody is interested in discussing the exercises, I have set up a discussion board:

http://www.roadtoreality.uk.to/