A Brief on Tensor Analysis:
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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Simmonds, James G. (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: New York, NY Springer US 1982
Series:Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics
Subjects:
Online Access:Volltext
Item Description: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. "What the book calls stress is actually a tensor. . . ." 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, "You're an undergraduate
Physical Description:1 Online-Ressource
ISBN:9781468401417
9781468401431
ISSN:0172-6056
DOI:10.1007/978-1-4684-0141-7

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