Thanks, I think you just answered my question :)
As I was reading your reply, I was watching one of Leonard Susskind's videos and he happened to be explaining something involving the Lagrangian function and I think he also answered my question. I am going to go over that part of the video...
Homework Statement
In books I have been using to learn about the Lagrangian function, I find equations that have a derivative of a partial derivative, as in the snippet below. Is there a place where I can learn how this works and *why* it works? I think I can do it mechanically but I want...
Homework Statement
I found this in Goldstein, Poole, and Safko and have seen it in other books. What I don't understand is how the equation gets from the second expression to the third; specifically, why is the m divided by two in the last expression? I am at a loss on this but I know it is...
This is essentially what I get in Ubuntu. If I mouse over an equation, I sometimes get a "balloon" type popup showing an enlarged view of the equation and if I right click, I get the normal Firefox context menu from which I can access the source for the entire page. Other times I get something...
Maybe that is the problem, that I was trying to view math in a quote box. I will keep that in mind. With some equations, I have to look for the math in the source for the entire page, with other equations, I get a Mathjax context menu and can see the math by clicking there, without having to...
I just realized something, after posting my question. The reason the dot product is not generally commutative probably has to do with whether the vectors or tensors are orthogonal.
Is that it? I think what confused me was that the book uses subscripts j, k, and l. That should not have...
I thought the dot product was commutative but there must be something about it that I don't understand. Perhaps the dot product is commutative only for vectors and not for tensors generally?
In Kusse and Westwig, p70, it says that the order of terms matters because, in general,
\hat{e}_j...
Apologies for having posted in the wrong place. I did not notice there was a support section.
I was aware of this manner of showing the source for an entire page, but in Firefox (Linux) I can see the source for some formulas, and only the source for the math, without having to see the entire...
I understand that I should be able to see the source for formulas/equations/math symbols people put in their posts, by right-clicking a symbol or equation. I seem to recall that I could do this but I am unable to do it now in Firefox (Ubuntu Linux Lucid).
Is there something I need to install...
I found this book and bought it a few years ago but one of the authors gave me a link to where it can now be downloaded for free:
http://www.adinfinitum.no/einsteins_theory_en.html
The book is in PDF format and is intended for non-mathematicians but it explains the math needed for a basic...
I live in northern California and there was a substantial earthquake here yesterday. To me, it seemed as though the shaking continued for somewhere between 30 seconds and 60 seconds, but one newspaper article stated the ground shook for 10 seconds.
Does anyone know how long structures such...
I am confused about the difference between the rank and order of a tensor.
On p 71 of Mathematical Physics 2nd Ed (Kusse and Westwig, 2006 Wiley-VCH), the rank of a tensor is described as identifying the number of basis vectors of the tensor but in some other books, this seems to be described...