Einstein's General Theory of Relativity | Lecture 1
Why Physics Stack Exchange recommends it
Physics Stack Exchange users link it as a free, thorough introduction to general relativity for self-learners, often when asked about prerequisites or where to start with Susskind's lectures.
Recommended by 2 people across 3 different months, 2011 to 2020.
What it is
The first lecture of Leonard Susskind's Stanford Continuing Studies course on Einstein's general theory of relativity, recorded in September 2008. Susskind, a Stanford physics professor, builds up the subject for an audience with some physics background, starting from the foundations of the theory.
Cited in 1 Wikipedia article, including General relativity.
What people said
Strong rec Nic · 2011-08 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “What are the prerequisites to studying general relativity?”
Can I recommend this set of videos from Stanford university as given by Leonard Susskind. Very thorough and very haelpful for me inthe summer before I took the course. Stanford Uni GR course [this video] Also it wouldn't hurt to look at some none GR cosmology courses, these will cover some of the physical phenomena that GR is necessary for to describe completely
Recommends Nic · 2011-05 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Any resources to learn how to interpret formulae/diagrams?”
This is series from Stanford university by Leonard Susskind: [this video] which introduces and uses tensor notation. This is a fairly high level course with a good introduction (the first 2 or 3 videos!) to various mathematical descriptions.
Recommends Last American Hero · 2012-09 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Undergraduate Math Major Wanting to Learn Physics”
I would add that their are numerous youtube lectures by Leonard Susskind covering many of these topics. General relativity is one [this video]
Cites José D. · 2014-05 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Leonard Susskind's videos. Which order?”
As a mathematics student with almost no modern physics background (just an introduction to relativity when I was in secondary school) I find Leonard Susskind's lectures videos (freely available in Youtube) very interesting but I am wondering, in which order should I watch them? Which courses first? These are the ones I have found in Youtube: Modern Physics: Quantum Mechanics ( [LINK] ) Modern Physics: Special Relativity ( [LINK] ) String Theory and M-Theory ( [LINK] ) Einstein's General Theory of Relativity ( [this video] ) Quantum Entanglements ( [LINK] ) Modern Physics: Classical Mechanics ( [LINK] ) Cosmology ( [LINK] ) The Theoretical Minimum ( [LINK] ) I would also appreciate if you could gi
Cites Pedro · 2020-07 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “The shell theorem and divergence in Susskind's GR lecture”
In the lecture available here [this video] , at around 1:36:50 [this video] , Susskind seems to argue that you can derive the fact that the gravitational field inside a spherical shell (of constant density) is 0 from the divergence theorem. I don't see how this argument works at all. All you get is that the divergence of the gravitational field inside the shell is 0, but that doesn't imply that the field itself is 0 of course. Am I missing something here?