The Smell of Fresh Books!

They arrived this morning.  I now have 9 months of Astrophysics and Cosmology to look forward to.

First impressions on flicking through the books?  Very doable and, dare I say it, they look rather enjoyable.  The cosmology course (The Relativistic Universe), starts off by dipping straight into Lorentz transformations and tensors.  However, I feel suitably prepared having now self-studied the Special Relativity section of S207 (The Physical World) and also a book on tensors! (Fleisch).

I have also finalized my study of the prep material for these two courses, that the O.U provides as a bridge, to those who may not have followed a traditional study route (like moi)!

I found it, for the large part, more wordy than I am use to, coming from a year of pure mathematics; but a welcome diversion, none-the-less.

The Astrophysics books actually look the more taxing of the two courses, which surprises me, since I was expecting the opposite, based on my little knowledge of the previous presentations of these two courses.

Anyway, tomorrow, I am dipping my toe into both courses.  I have the books, I might as well just get on with it!

Great.