Tensor Calculus (SCHAUM) Paperback – 11 Feb. 2011

I am currently a physics student. Anyone in their fourth year will tell you that there's a lot of relativity going down. I'm taking courses in relativistic quantum mechanics, relativistic electrodynamics, general relativity, particle physics (relativistic kinematics amongst others).What comes up time and time again is tensor analysis, due to the continual use of four-vectors to specify special relativistic quantities. This is generally the first time that students really need to understand tensor calculus. I had a brief introduction to index notation in my second year and tensors crop up every now and again but generally it's enough to just consider them as a matrix.Around the first half of the general relativity course is learning the maths. It's all fun stuff like coordinate transforms, four vectors, one-forms, working out what the hell is up with upper and lower indices and non-flat spacetimes.Tensors are the sort of thing that are straightforward once you've done it a hundred times, but as a beginner it's easy to get lost in the indicies and the summation convention. Unfortunately most courses don't give you that much practice and simply tell you the general axioms expecting you to be able to use them. So enter Schaum.The outlines give you a LOT of problems, all with solutions, and let you build up your knowledge from scratch. Chapter 1 is a nice introduction to the summation convention, letting you get used to fiddling with dummy indices, etc. Chapter 2 continues hard and fast into linear algebra and you should have a very good understanding of it including vectors, matrices, Jacobians and partial differentiation.So chapter 2 does go over matrix inversion, the determinant and so on, but really it should be a refresher for you and more a convenient new notation than learning from scratch. Schaum do another good guide on linear algebra anyway.Pretty much everything up to chapter 12 is mandatory reading for anyone studying (or self studying) for a course in general or 'proper' special relativity. The last few chapters are more mathematical and deal with manifolds which don't really come up much in undergraduate physics - but if you're studying differential geometry might help.Note there is virtually no useful reference to physics, though this will probably the core audience. This isn't a complaint, more an observation that this is a maths book for physicists and you should look to instruction on mechanics elsewhere.My only real complaint is that the worked questions have the answer directly below the problem meaning you have to cover it up if you want to try them yourself. The end of chapter problems are all answered (not worked) in the appendix as usual.£10 is a small amount of money to pay to boost your understanding. You can't hope to grasp higher level physics without a solid grounding in tensors. Great stuff!

Congratulate me. It's taken over 5 years and three attempts, but I've finally got to the end of this book. It was hard going:some of the diagrams need reworking, and often key parts of an explanation are buried in a line or two.Over the five years I've read many books on cosmology, quantum physics, and the associated maths. This book gets 5 stars because out of the dozens of books I've read, this is the ONLY book with extensive worked problems.Worked problems are essential for self learning. I wish other authors would pay attention to this: Penrose, Susskind, Rindler, etc have written some very pleasant books, but without worked solutions to the problems they set, they are almost useless for self learning. This surely must be laziness on the part of the author or publisher. After all you can't set a problem without having worked through the solution. Can you?

Like most (but not all!) schaums books this is a clear one stop shop for a explanation around all of the key concepts around tensor calculus. Wokrf examples galore and a minimum of fuss and text. Recommended...

Nice new book but quite basic. Sticks to tensors. Would have been nice if it worked in more dimensions and we saw different cases but it's a very well written book and helped understand a lot.

Easy to read. Keeps my mind from wandering. Also assisting in exploring a new theory

Great reference for all maths and physics students.

Extremely helpful

good value for money