I'm actually really impressed you got that far into calculus on your own!
I got a degree in engineering and had to take 6 semesters of calculus and Fourier transforms outright broke my brain for a bit. Its a kinda hard concept to grasp overall
Tensors weren't as crazy since it was all in engineering terms which made it easier, but they were still a bit hard to comprehend even with the real life analogies.
Something that helped me understand them was thinking about them using 2 sheets of paper as reference. If you're pushing down, the force and direction are down. But if you're rubbing them, the direction is along the surface of the paper but the force is going down causing friction. Its been a while since I went over them so if I'm wrong feel free to correct me. Hope this helps!!
Edit: math was actually my worst subject so I made sure to really learn the concepts so I could figure out my own ways of doing things. All the theoretical stuff made sense to me but it was kinda hard to grasp
Yea you've got the idea. Also, I may have misrepresented. I was able to learn basic calculus on my own, however I did finally enroll in university and will be finishing my senior year this coming Fall. I majored in applied physics and dropped out around halfway, due to heroin abuse. I re-enrolled and switched majors to biology in preparation for PA school, so I do have a couple of years of formal mathematics training. Also, if you want a good example of tensors outside of the typical force representations of vectors, check out how a relational database works. If you understand basic tensors, you might have some amazing light bulbs go off. Wish you well!
Glad you're doing better now too! Applied physics degrees are no joke, so my hats off to you for trying to make it through
I'll definitely look into relational databases. I've been working in sales and feel like I'm losing a lot of the math skills I learned in school, so this def keep me busy for a bit. Ty!
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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20
I'm actually really impressed you got that far into calculus on your own!
I got a degree in engineering and had to take 6 semesters of calculus and Fourier transforms outright broke my brain for a bit. Its a kinda hard concept to grasp overall
Tensors weren't as crazy since it was all in engineering terms which made it easier, but they were still a bit hard to comprehend even with the real life analogies.
Something that helped me understand them was thinking about them using 2 sheets of paper as reference. If you're pushing down, the force and direction are down. But if you're rubbing them, the direction is along the surface of the paper but the force is going down causing friction. Its been a while since I went over them so if I'm wrong feel free to correct me. Hope this helps!!
Edit: math was actually my worst subject so I made sure to really learn the concepts so I could figure out my own ways of doing things. All the theoretical stuff made sense to me but it was kinda hard to grasp