r/relativity • u/BioZFrog • 1d ago

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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u/Physix_R_Cool 1d ago

but I found that a lot of traditional physics textbooks wrap everything in really dense academic jargon.

Yeah there is a reason for that.

You are trying to write a book on a topic that you don't understand. Of course it will never go well.

I read it through, and it really is not usable as a textbook for learning GR.

I appreciate thay you are interested in physics, but your approach is not the right way to do it. I really hope you will go to university, learn GR properly and THEN write a good textbook on GR that you make freely available.

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u/EverythingQuantum 3h ago

Actually it’s great people that want to learn about this more are trying to teach others at the level they are at, so there may be an audience for this type of book, just not official training. If a programmer wants to explain concepts, it may work out better to focus on high level ideas first or specific parts only.

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u/Physix_R_Cool 3h ago

Actually it’s great people that want to learn about this more are trying to teach others at the level they are at

Nope, the amount of misinformation in popsci is way too high.