This is not a new paper. It appeared in AJP in 2006. But for some reason or another, I came across it lately in one of my searches, and I don't think I've highlighted this before. This is an excellent presentation by James Hartle on the rationale to introduce General Relativity to undergraduate physics students. This is no easy task because GR does require a bit of sophistication, especially with mathematics. But beyond that, the paper is actually a good intro to GR where one can actually get a taste of basic GR concepts.
A good paper to read.
Zz.
I took his undergrad Gravitation and Relativity class at UCSB and it was quite interesting. It greatly prepared me to take it in grad school, I had the main concepts down already so that I could focus on mastering the mathematics.
ReplyDeleteA number of years ago, J. R. Gott III taught an undergrad GR course at Princeton. He gave a spectacularly clever and funny lecture on time travel in GR.
ReplyDeletei never had a course on GR. did SR as undergrad.
ReplyDeletei can see now that is one of the reasons that Jackson was so confusing for E&M.
gotta go and get Hartle's or Thorne's book now and read them!