Astronomy 260, Spring 2007

General Relativity

Vanderbilt University
Department of Physics & Astronomy

http://brahms.phy.vanderbilt.edu/a260

The Basics

Homework & Exams

Group Problems

Random Information

Hyperbolic Angles and Lorentz Boosts

Some pages of handwritten notes that go through the connection of hyperbolic angles and hyperbolic rotations to Lorentz Transformations. These suck. Please don't read them. I'll make better ones at some point.

GNU Octave

This is a matrix/math/numerical software package that works on Linux and Unix, and claims to work on Windows with Cygwin. I used to use Euler for this sort of thing, but for some reason have decided that the time has come for me to learn Octave.

Maxima

A free computer algebra program. I am not terribly familiar with it, but hope to become more familiar with it. All I know is that this made me happy:

(%i1) integrate(exp(-x^2/2),x,-inf,inf);
(%o1) 			       sqrt(2) sqrt(%pi)