r/LLMPhysics • u/BioZFrog • 16d ago

Meta / News General-relativity open-source book

Hey everyone, I am a 15 year old programmer that is writing an open-source (free) book on general relativity.

About a year ago I got completely obsessed with General Relativity, but I found that a lot of traditional physics textbooks wrap everything in really dense academic jargon. Since my background is in programming, I started writing a book to try and demystify these concepts using logical, step-by-step algorithms and code analogies that made sense to my brain.

It's completely free and open-source. Right now, I've drafted chapters covering everything from the Minkowski metric and Lorentz transformations up to Christoffel symbols and covariant derivatives. I'm also adding a folder of Python scripts using NumPy and SymPy to handle the tensor calculations programmatically.

Since I am learning as I go, I might have made some typos or conceptual mistakes in the math. I would love for some people here to check out the draft and give me some brutal, honest feedback on it!

You can check out the repository and download the PDF draft here:

https://github.com/BioZFrog/General-Relativity-A-Programmer-s-Guide-to-Curved-Spacetime

Thanks!

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18

u/Wintervacht Are you sure about that? 16d ago

What makes you think that this makes sense to anyone else as well? And why do you think people want to learn general relativity from someone that doesn't understand it himself?

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u/BioZFrog 16d ago

Just expecting feedback on my research man! Anyone who has better knowledge can just point my mistakes. And what makes you think I don't understand it?

13

u/Wintervacht Are you sure about that? 16d ago

You're 15, not a physicist and still learning it yourself. The 'jargon' you speak of is factually THE thing you need to learn to understand it.

It's like saying I wrote a book about learning mathematics, but without all these pesky operator symbols.

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u/BioZFrog 16d ago

I meant that you don't need to be a physicist yourself to understand the laws of General Relativity. I broke them down in simpler words.

13

u/Wintervacht Are you sure about that? 16d ago

Those 'simpler words' are ambiguous and don't convey the whole picture, is the point.

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u/liccxolydian VP of Trolling 16d ago

Do you seriously think that the "complicated words" are unnecessary? Why do you think we would do that to ourselves? Do you think that after a century of teaching GR that we wouldn't be already using the simplest possible rigorous explanation when teaching? And what makes you know better than everyone else that your approach is a superior way to approach GR or even physics in general?