  ©William O. Straub, fl. 2004-2016 wostraub@gmail.com AfterMath Copyright Disclaimer Index photos courtesy ETH-Bibliothek, Zurich Bildarchiv Who Was Hermann Weyl? Wheeler's Tribute to Weyl (PDF) Older Stuff 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2016-2020 2021-2022 Math Tools Weyl's Spinor and Dirac's Equation Weyl's Conformal Tensor Weyl Conformal Gravity Weyl's 1918 Theory Weyl's 1918 Theory Revisited Weyl v. Schrodinger Why Did Weyl's Theory Fail? Did Weyl Screw Up? Weyl and the Aharonov-Bohm Effect The Bianchi Identities in Weyl Space Conformal, Parameter-Free Riemannian Gravity Gravity Wave Tutorial Conformal Kerr-de Sitter Gravity A Child's Guide to Spinors Levi-Civita Rhymes with Lolita Weyl's Scale Factor Weyl's Spin Connection Weyl and Higgs Theory Weyl & Schrodinger - Two Geometries Lorentz Transformation of Weyl Spinors Riemannian Vectors in Weyl Space Introduction to Quantum Field Theory A Children's Primer on Quantum Entanglement Veblen and Weyl Graphing the Lorentz Transformation FLRW in de Sitter Spacetime FLRW with a Constant Curvature Scalar Is There a Flaw in the FLRW Metric? On the Mannheim-Kazanas Spacetime Electron Spin Clebsch-Gordan Calculator Bell's Inequality The Four-Frequency of Light There Must Be a Magnetic Field! Non-Metricity and the RC Tensor Curvature Tensor Components Kaluza-Klein Theory The Divergence Myth in Gauss-Bonnet Gravity Schrodinger Geometry A Brief Look at Gaussian Integrals Differential Forms for Physics Students Particle Chart Einstein's 1931 Pasadena Home Today Uncommon Valor  She did not forget Jesus!
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Gravitation Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, John A. Wheeler W. H. Freeman and Company, 1973 I found this book in a public library in the little town of Lone Pine, California, in 1975. The book had absolutely no business being there, wedged as it was among ancient Readers Digest book abridgments, crumbling National Geographics, and the usual assortment of old donated tomes that inevitably end their lives in rural libraries such as this. But however it got there, I'm not complaining. The book really changed my life. At first glance, Gravitation is daunting reading. Your first impression will probably be colored by the fact that it weighs about six pounds and takes up almost 1,300 pages. If you have no mathematical training beyond algebra, then forget about it. But if you've ever wanted to learn general relativity, this is it -- the official version, the Bible of gravity, spacetime and cosmology. It's all there, and in modern mathematical notation. Like the real Bible, books like this are good for the soul. No doubt, Riemann and Einstein would have been proud. The book's chapters appear to cover the minimum of what one would expect from a text such as this: flat and curved spacetime physics, Einstein's gravitational equations, relativistic star formation, the evolution of the universe, gravitational collapse, gravity waves, and experimental tests of general relativity. However, the book's depth of coverage on these topics is impressive to say the least. The book's subjects are developed along two tracks: Track 1 is focused on key physical ideas, while Track 2 is intended as an enriched and expanded version of the Track 1 material. The authors state that the entire book is suitable for a rigorous, one-year course at the graduate level, but for the life of me I can't see anyone getting through the book's 1,300 pages of rigorous mathematics in that short period of time. An interesting approach to learning is the authors' description of the mathematics and notation of differential geometry and general relativity. They present various mathematical objects almost as machines or engines, which provides a unique view as to how these quantities actually function. Another pleasant aspect of the book is its wonderful graphics which, unfortunately for me, were rather hard to grasp at times. The book also provides many biographical sketches of those scientists who were most responsible for the development of general relativity and its mathematics. The book is also replete with many tables, boxes and other sidebar material containing data that you'll not likely see anywhere else (one box actually made me cheer: "Farewell to x4 = ict"). Finally, the book's authors write with clarity and ingenuity, with much cleverness and wit thrown in, and there's also the occasional use of prose and poetry, all very appropriate for a book whose main subject is as much philosophy as it is physics. As far as gauge invariance is concerned, you'll have to do some digging. There's some material on geometric gauge transformations and the invariance of Einstein's equations in the weak-field limit, but nothing specific to Weyl's 1918 work. While the book's index is comprehensive, I still found it hard to track down specific topics. If you're new to general relativity, I would suggest you find another less demanding book in order to prepare for this one. By far the best one I've found to date is Adler-Bazin-Schiffer's Introduction to General Relativity. The book's mathematical notation is not as modern as Gravitation, but it's far easier to understand for the novice. |
