Introduction to Vector and Tensor Analysis

Rating:
Summary: Einstein also needed a tensor analysis coach
Review: This non-descript chestnut from Dover books is actually a good amateur's 'alibaba' entry to Tensor Analysis, with a short exposition of General Relavity at the end. Don't be put off by Experts, one reviewer suggests Spivak on Differential Manifolds. Please! sneak into the subject armed with a sharp pencil, a sheaf of paper, and write out the tensors sans the summation convention. Tensors look humungous, and Christoffel tensors _are_ humungous, but the subject will yield to a few weeks of concentrated scratchpad figuring. The book actually requires the basics of vector analysis, a la the stuff in most electro-mag texts. From there you can take a flying leap into this neverneverland where there were supposed to be only twelve people who understood the subject. Not actually that bad. The grand finale shows us the grand spacetime metric, which looks a bit like ye olde Pythagorean Theorem all over again, this time in grand style. Fun book to rummage through. Save Spivak and differential geometry for dessert.