3 ms·
I used these notes when I prepared the general relativity exam in my university years. I found them much clearer than Wald's "General Relativity", the textbook
by ziotom78 9y ago
I used these notes when I prepared the general relativity exam in my university years. I found them much clearer than Wald's "General Relativity", the textbook used in the class.
However, when I had to prepare lecture notes for my own class on cosmology several years later, I found these notes a bit too simplistic. Many of the details and definitions in Wald's text that I found unnecessarily complicated 15 years ago suddenly become unavoidable to my eyes (scompare e.g., Wald's chapter about manifolds with Carrol's definition).
I still think that Carrol's notes are a great introduction to GR. But it would be better for you to keep some other bigger text at hand as well, in order to fill all the details that are missing in the former.
- barking 9y agoThere was a submission (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14177074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14177074) here recently that linked to the wikepedia article on the curse of knowledge. Could it be that Wald's textbook illustrates that phenomenon?
- joshvm 9y agoHobson [, Efstathiou and Lasenby] was the book I used to revise for my exams, and that was good. It's not overly simplistic and requires a bit of working to get through the maths, but it's comprehensive and goes further than most undergraduate courses do (up to Kerr black holes and a bit more).
- 77pt77 9y ago> Wald's chapter about manifolds with Carrol's definition You shouldn't be getting these definitions from physics books anyway. Carrol's note are good to get a decent grasp on the subject and using them as a trampoline to reach higher levels.