good first book for learning general relativity

books:


	• A First Course in General Relativity Bernard F. Schutz Cambridge University Press, 1985 - 392 pages average customer review:based on 25 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

As the title says, a good 'First Course'

There are a lot of books on General Relativity. In approach they vary from no math, to essentially math books. This book is somewhere in the middle. It is said to be suitable for a one year course for beginning graduate students or for undergraduates in physics who have studied special relativity, vector calculus, and electrostatics.

To enable such a student to follow the math in in this book the first part of the book reviews special relativity and vector analysis. Then the book has a section on Tensor Analysis, which was newly developed in Einstein's time when it was called tensor calculus. The treatment of these mathematical concepts in this book are, in my mind, sufficient for a review for a student that had studied them before, but will require some pretty good insight for a student that had not seen them before. This background information covers about a third of the book.

Chapter 5 of the book starts out, 'Until now we have discussed only SR.' The next two thirds cover curvature, physics in a curved spacetime, the Einstein field equations, gravitational radiation (the biggest chapter in the book), and on to the rest of GR.

By the end of the book the student has indeed completed a 'first course' in GR. There is still plenty more to go for the interested student specializing in this area.

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good first book for learning general relativity

This book is a good introduction to relativity which does not pull punches mathematically speaking but still manages to be merciful to the beginner. I read this book with only a basic background in freshman college physics and calculus. It took me 2 6-month sessions over 2 years to go through it all in detail but it was worth it. It gave me a sufficient familiarity with the core concepts and underlying mathematics to consider tackling a more advanced book on relativity someday.

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Great intro text

I started reading this book at a friend's house about 1 year ago and after graduating and starting to miss physics, I decided to pick it up and try something I didn't get in school. This book does a great job of building a fundamental understand of what is going on(and doesn't shy away from the math). The best part is the different ways it can be read. It is written to leave a lot of the deep math(actually expanding the equations and seeing the results in a more concrete manner) to the reader's discretion. As a working person, this is a huge advantage, as it means I can read ahead to curvature while spending my weekends getting familiar with tensor math.

I highly suggest this as a start for anyone that wants to get a feel for GR(not a pop culture feel, but a real understanding of the ideas and math) but doesn't always have the time to work through the math. I also have the Misner, Thorne and Wheeler book Gravitation, and while it gives a much more expansive study of GR, I don't find myself with the time required to read it.

The only drawback is I feel it doesn't give the best intuition about tensors of a higher order than a one form. But that is probably due to my own lack of intuition in that area.

For clarity, My relevant background in physics and math:
ODE, PDE, Vector Calculus, Introductory Analysis and topology, QM, EM, Mechanics, Optics, Thermodynamics. I've never studied non-euclidean space or any real study of geometry beyond the most basic of real number line topology.

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As easy as it can be

Nice introduction to GR. Not extensive previous knowledge needed and as clear as it could be.

Good Intro, but Leaves A LOT out

As background, I am a senior undergrad doing a thesis on black hole perturbations (following Chandrasekhar). This was the first book I got on GR, a little over a year ago, and I fell in love with it. It does a great job of quickly, though not completely painlessly, introducing you to GR. HOWEVER, as I now continue my ventures further, I find a lot of fundamental concepts lacking in my education. I went from this book onto parts of Wald: not a good idea IMO. I am currently paging through Lovelock and Rund and wishing the mathematical aspect had been introduced in Schutz as well as here. In the end, very nice, well explained intro to the concepts, but you NEED to either supplement with better mathematical explanation, or move quickly to higher book.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

General relativity has become one of the central pillars of theoretical physics, with important applications in both astrophysics and high-energy particle physics, and no modern theoretical physicist's education should be regarded as complete without some study of the subject. This textbook, based on the author's own undergraduate teaching, develops general relativity and its associated mathematics from a minimum of prerequisites, leading to a physical understanding of the theory in some depth. It reinforces this understanding by making a detailed study of the theory's most important applications - neutron stars, black holes, gravitational waves, and cosmology - using the most up-to-date astronomical developments. The book is suitable for a one-year course for beginning graduate students or for undergraduates in physics who have studied special relativity, vector calculus, and electrostatics. Graduate students should be able to use the book selectively for half-year courses.

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