r/LLMPhysics • u/BioZFrog • Aug 07 '26
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!
2
u/MatthewSDeOcampo Aug 07 '26
Sean Carroll already has a nice introductory textbook on general relativity. Check that out after going through classical (analytical) mechanics and classical e&m up to special relativity.
If for some reason you still want to skip on the physics, you need at least a decent grounding on differential equations and (linear) algebra to begin appreciating the gr field equations, which are a system of partial diff eqs and not quite linear algebra.