Would that be your top recommendation for a book on the matter, or just what's to hand?
This is the one subject where I feel that I've been significantly shortchanged by my college education; in the mechanical engineering curricula that I've been through, there is absolutely no course that provides even a basic introduction to tensors, despite having a year's worth of M.E.-specific masters'-level math classes on top of all the undergrad stuff. And then in the fluid dynamics classes, stress tensors are a fundamental part of the whole matter, but it's assumed that one already understands the concept and never really explained. "You pick up all you need to know by osmosis", they told me. Yeah, sure; I got through the class with no problem, but when I want to deal with something other than following formulaic treatments, I feel a bit lost....
I've picked up a couple of books that I've come across that purport to describe tensors, but they have a feel of being really quite dense and best coupled with a good lecture series to be understood from ground-state.
Maybe I should ask around the physics department next fall, and see if there's a general relativity class or something that discusses tensors in detail, that I can audit. (Any thoughts on what's good to look for?) Too bad I'm so far from Maryland; I figure you could probably explain it to me in a few hours and I'd know at least enough to pick up the details from the books I have.
Re: But of course!
This is the one subject where I feel that I've been significantly shortchanged by my college education; in the mechanical engineering curricula that I've been through, there is absolutely no course that provides even a basic introduction to tensors, despite having a year's worth of M.E.-specific masters'-level math classes on top of all the undergrad stuff. And then in the fluid dynamics classes, stress tensors are a fundamental part of the whole matter, but it's assumed that one already understands the concept and never really explained. "You pick up all you need to know by osmosis", they told me. Yeah, sure; I got through the class with no problem, but when I want to deal with something other than following formulaic treatments, I feel a bit lost....
I've picked up a couple of books that I've come across that purport to describe tensors, but they have a feel of being really quite dense and best coupled with a good lecture series to be understood from ground-state.
Maybe I should ask around the physics department next fall, and see if there's a general relativity class or something that discusses tensors in detail, that I can audit. (Any thoughts on what's good to look for?) Too bad I'm so far from Maryland; I figure you could probably explain it to me in a few hours and I'd know at least enough to pick up the details from the books I have.
- Brooks