ANNOUNCEMENTS
MTH 437/537 - Spring 2004

6/7/04

Sorry for the short notice. I will also be in my office from 2-3 PM today.

6/3/04

I should be in my office Monday, June 7, from 9-11:30 AM. I may also be there Monday afternoon; feel free to stop by and/or send email to try to set up an appointment. And of course I'll be reading my email all weekend.

5/31/04

The final will be Monday, June 7, at 6 PM, in Kidder 280.

• The exam is closed book.
• You may bring one sheet of paper with handwritten notes on one side.
• The exam is cumulative; material prior to the midterm is fair game.
• The most important topics from after the midterm are the Schwarzschild solution and black holes.

5/24/04

It is possible to solve this week's homework problem starting from the line element and using some clever differentiation, but this approach turns out to be surprisingly subtle. A much more straightforward approach is to look at the geodesic equation, as suggested in the problem.

5/24/04

Here are some references for this morning's lecture:

Edwin F. Taylor, Oerstad Medal acceptance speech (discusses GPS), Am. J. Phys. 66, 369-376 (1998);

Spell it Nordström, Dieter Brill and Tevian Dray, Gen. Rel. Grav. 25, 435-436 (1993).

5/14/04

The exams have been graded; solutions have been posted outside my office.

5/8/04

The midterm will indeed be Wednesday, May 12, in class.

• The exam is closed book.
• You may bring a 3×5 card with handwritten notes.
• The exam will cover everything discussed in class through Monday, 5/10.
• Homework solutions will be posted outside my office.
• Important topics are tensor manipulations, curvature calculations, Einstein's equation, and cosmology.

5/3/04

The midterm is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, May 12, in class.

There is a homework assignment due May 10. If you want to be sure of getting it back before the exam, please turn it in by May 7.

4/30/04

A student in the class has pointed out this URL, which shows how to calculate curvature tensors, using the sphere as an example. Thanks for the tip!

4/26/04

Although I did announce last Wednesday that the homework would be due this Wednesday, I forgot to correct the webpage, which listed the due date as Friday. I do encourage you to turn in the homework on Wednesday, but under the circumstances I will accept it until Friday.

4/21/04

I have posted some old notes on curvature which you may find helpful.

4/20/04

I have posted some notes on algebraic computing in relativity, which describes the use of packages available on (some) machines at OSU. Note especially the new package GRTensorJ, which should run in most browsers.

This morning's launch of Gravity Probe B was successful.

4/19/04

Gravity Probe B is being launched this morning to measure as yet unverified "frame-dragging" rotational effects predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. Current information can be found at the project website at Stanford.

This morning's launch was canceled at the last moment, and has been rescheduled for tomorrow morning.

4/14/04

Students who did not take MTH 434 may be interested in my notes on the Hodge star operator.

4/12/04

There will be a review session on Wednesday, 4/14, in our regular classroom (Kidder 280), starting at 8 PM. I expect it will run 60-90 minutes.

4/7/04

A copy of my article on the twin paradox on the cylinder has been posted outside my office. You can also find it in the library:

The Twin Paradox Revisited,
Tevian Dray, Am. J. Phys. 58, 822-825 (1990)

4/5/04

I'd like to have a "review" session to give students who didn't take MTH 434 a crash course on differential forms; the session should also be useful to students who did take MTH 434. Please let me know whether you are interested in such a session, and give me some indication of what times are good. My first proposal would be to try sometime next Tuesday (4/13), including the evening, but other times are possible.

4/2/04

If you are having trouble printing my notes, this is probably due to a software glitch. There is an incompability between the way blank pages are handled by the public domain software I use to produce PDF files and newer versions (>4) of Acrobat. The only current "fix" is in turn incompatible with older versions (<4) of Acrobat. (Sigh.) I will post a "fixed" version later today.

The second page is blank. A workaround is to print the first page separately, then print starting with page 3.

As of 8 PM, the "fixed" version has been posted. Please let me know of any further problems.

3/31/04

A list of books on general relativity with brief descriptions can be found here.

3/22/04

A preliminary homework assignment has been posted on the homework page.

Make sure to read the ground rules as well.