文档介绍：Elementary
General
Relativity
Version
Alan Macdonald
Luther College, Decorah, IA USA
mailto:******@
/∼macdonal
c
To Ellen
“The magic of this theory will hardly fail to impose itself on anybody
who has truly understood it.”
Albert Einstein, 1915
“The foundation of general relativity appeared to me then [1915],
and it still does, the greatest feat of human thinking about Nature,
the most bination of philosophical ration, physical
intuition, and mathematical skill.”
Max Born, 1955
“One of the principal objects of theoretical research in any depart-
ment of knowledge is to find the point of view from which the subject
appears in its greatest simplicity.”
Josiah Willard Gibbs
“There is a widespread indifference to attempts to put accepted the-
ories on better logical foundations and to clarify their experimental
basis, an indifference occasionally amounting to hostility. I am con-
cerned with the effects of our neglect of foundations on the educa-
tion of scientists. It is plain that the clearer the teacher, the more
transparent his logic, the fewer and more decisive the number of ex-
periments to be examined in detail, the faster will the pupil learn
and the surer and sounder will be his grasp of the subject.”
Sir Hermann Bondi
“Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Albert Einstein
Preface
My purpose here is to provide, with a minimum of mathematical machinery
and in the fewest possible pages, a clear and careful explanation of the physical
principles and applications of classical general relativity. The prerequisites are
single variable calculus, a few basic facts about partial derivatives and line
integrals, a little matrix algebra, and some basic physics.
The book is for those seeking a conceptual understanding of the theory, not
computational prowess. Despite it’s brevity and modest prerequisites, it is a
serious introduction to the physics and mathe