Today's library addition: A new (2024) history book on how we arrived at the current notation for vectors and general tensors, with an early nod to the quaternion approach and how things could have gone another route.
Greg Trayling
9,566 posts
Greg Trayling
@GregTrayling
Physicist, traveller, futurist, history buff, architecturist, occasional artist, boomerang thrower, carpenter, hack musician. Free typo in almost every post!
Rochester, NY.
Joined April 2022
- Replying to @profdvpMy experience is that item #6 on that list can significantly differ for many of these students, although I have seen it happen occasionally.
- Replying to @Eddie_RadicalMy fault. I've been clicking on the wrong signs on those captcha tests for at least ten years.
- Today's library addition. Very thorough and up to date (2016) and a great companion to standards such as Lounesto's Clifford Algebras and Spinors.
- New book from Cambridge University Press arrived today. Lots of historical tidbits I hadn't read before only a few dozen pages in. Very interesting.
- Replying to @mathematicsprofMy father only went to grade 5 before going off to work in the logging camps but managed fairly well with most things, except that any math above basic arithmetic was a mystery. He'd be puzzled seeing me work on something asking 'how long does it take to add those numbers up?'
- Kids shouldn't learn that reality isn't at all what it seems to be until maybe 11 at the earliest.
- Replying to @wtgowersWhat's the curvature of the space they're in, and the metric? What's their size? Do their sides lay along geodesics? So many questions here. Joking, but I wasted a lot of time in grade school trying to figure out what answer they wanted and at what level.
- Thank you for dining at our restaurant! We realize that our customers may dine at other establishments, but anyone caught mentioning them during dinner, or wearing a t-shirt displaying another eatery, will have the food and drink removed from their table. Enjoy!
- Replying to @WUTangKidsI've never seen my own uncrystallized thoughts expressed so eloquently. I wonder if this guy takes requests.
- Today's library addition. A lot of similarities with Cartan's Theory of Spinors but in updated terminology (2000) and more detail with general relativity and gauge theory in later chapters, emphasizing that they are more fundamental than tensors.
- Replying to @Prune602 and @WeirdMedievalAre those roller skates?
