How Can a Retired Mathematician Dive Into Physics During Self-Quarantine?

[matrixbud]

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I am a retired mathematician who never had time to study physics beyond the basic 2 year college course (50 years ago). I have been self-quarantined for the past two years so I have found the time to digest first an intro quantum mechanics book (Quantum Mechanics, The Theoretical Minimum) and now General Relativity (Foster and Nightingale, A Short Course in GR), which is what led me to this website. This book, apparently like others, needs one formula for the partial deriviative of the determinant of the metric tensor in terms of the metric tensor cofactor matrix but it is too much of a digression to actually include a proof of this formula. Others here have asked the same question.

I have a web site, https://github.com/matrixbud?tab=repositories, where I have posted my solutions to many of the problems in the books listed above as well as Road to Reality (Penrose). I have also developed an extensive geometric algebra (aka Clifford agebra) mathematica package available for free for anyone who wishes to automate the tedious geometric algebra computations.

As I said, I am self-quarentined so I have no one to collaborate with, and I rely on what I can find on the web.

 

[jedishrfu]

Welcome to PF.

Please take some time to read our site guidelines if you're going to stay around.

Our primary focus is helping students with STEM problems. We don't provide solutions but rather hints after they've shown us some work. This guideline often catches newbies here as they try to be too helpful.

Our secondary focus is on discussing peer-reviewed articles. Our guidelines list several no-go topics including PMM, the em-drive, and other fringe science topics.

On a personal note, the Suskind books are good places to recover your physics with minimal math but without the PopSci fluff that dazzles the eyes and distracts from real physics.

Again welcome to PF,
Jedi