A first course in general relativity
by Bernard F. Schutz · first published 1985
71% recommend14% neutral14% critical
Why HN recommends it
Clear, lucid explanations of difficult material that many readers say made the subject click; accessible to undergraduates who know special relativity and vector calculus, and a good first GR text.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Clarity, readability and rigor combine in the second edition of this widely-used textbook to provide the first step into general relativity for undergraduate students with a minimal background in mathematics. Topics within relativity that fascinate astrophysical researchers and students alike are covered.
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…by Shankar. This spends more time on the mathematical foundations of QM than Griffiths does and goes into the path integral formalism and touches on relativistic QM towards the end of the book. 10. A First Course in General Relativity by Schutz. There are arbitrarily advanced texts on GR, but I'd recommend starting off with something friendly like Schutz. 11. An Introduction to Elementary Particles by Griffiths. Not super advanced…
on “Ask HN: How to self-study physics?” ↗For GR, I really liked Bernard Schutz's "A First Course in General Relativity" -- I read it from cover to cover. Extremely lucid explanations of some very complex topics, and reading it for the first time blew my mind. This book "teaches" you well (compared to other books where…
on “So You Want to Learn Physics” ↗I learnt a lot from “Introducing Einstein's Relativity” by Ray d'Inverno and “A First Course in General Relativity” by Bernard Schutz. However, they are by no means leisurely reads. You need to be prepared to expand your mind (both your physical intuition and mathematical technique) and work very hard (you don't learn…
on “An explorable explanation of relativistic spacetime” ↗…learning QFT. Use many sources. Expect to get stuck with any one of them. Bounce between them to un-stick. Next up, differential geometry, tensors, and GR.... Google is your friend. I like Schutz's "a first course in general relativity" and really like Zee's Einstein Gravity book but I am working into this now and so my recommendations are running out. Check out this video as an intro to GR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foRPKAKZWx8…
on “Ask HN: How do I learn math/physics in my thirties?” ↗I can recommend: Bernard F. Schultz, _A first course in general relativity_ It's accessible to undergrads! (who have studied SR, vector calculus, electrostatics).
on “Most images of black holes are illustrations. Here’s what our telescopes capture” ↗…geometry). For that course, I mostly used the instructor's lecture notes. However, the books for the course were: Hartle, James B., Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Schutz, Bernard, A First Course in General Relativity The first few chapters would be all you need, but they don't include the nice things I learned from the lecture notes like how to derive the gradient, divergence, and curl in any curvilinear coordinate…
on “Learning Math for Machine Learning” ↗…account you will realize there is no contradiction and the POVs of the two observers are indeed symmetric as expected from the word "relativity". For more on this check out e.g. Bernhard Schutz's "A First Course in General Relativity". IMO it's a rather terrible book as far as General Relativity goes but the first chapter, which is about Special Relativity (~25 pages), is fantastic and is was what helped me finally understand SR and,…
on “Space explosion reveals possible hints of dark matter” ↗