Brief on Tensor Analysis (eBook)

J.G. Simmonds (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2012
Springer New York (Verlag)
978-1-4684-0141-7 (ISBN)

Infos

When I was an undergraduate, working as a co-op student at North American Aviation, I tried to learn something about tensors. In the Aeronautical En- gineering Department at MIT, I had just finished an introductory course in classical mechanics that so impressed me that to this day I cannot watch a plane in flight-especially in a tum-without imaging it bristling with vec- tors. Near the end of the course the professor showed that, if an airplane is treated as a rigid body, there arises a mysterious collection of rather simple- looking integrals called the components of the moment of inertia tensor. Tensor-what power those two syllables seemed to resonate. I had heard the word once before, in an aside by a graduate instructor to the cognoscenti in the front row of a course in strength of materials. "e;What the book calls stress is actually a tensor. . . ."e; With my interest twice piqued and with time off from fighting the brush- fires of a demanding curriculum, I was ready for my first serious effort at self- instruction. In Los Angeles, after several tries, I found a store with a book on tensor analysis. In my mind I had rehearsed the scene in which a graduate stu- dent or professor, spying me there, would shout, "e;You're an undergraduate.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.12.2012
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Mathematik ► Analysis
• ISBN-10: 1-4684-0141-6 / 1468401416
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-0141-7 / 9781468401417