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Reforming the Mathematical Language of Physics (2002) [pdf]

41 pointsby aethertapabout 10 years ago

3 comments

yequalsxabout 10 years ago
My brief reading of this suggest it isn&#x27;t mathematically sound in terms of its presentation.<p>On page 9 he discusses what he calls the geometric product. The problem is that the geometric product of two vectors is not a vector. This means that the space he is really working is larger than the vector space he started with. This isn&#x27;t explained to the reader. What is this larger space?<p>Equation (7) shows that the geometric product of a and b is a.b + a wedge b. From this it&#x27;s clear that he is working in the exterior algebra of the vector space.<p>Reading further shows that what he is really doing is giving geometric meanings to the operations in the exterior algebra where V is R^2 and R^3. This is useful and I think it has merit but I also think one should start with the proper setting.<p>Looking on page 9 going from (11) to (12) requires quite a leap. He says to square (11) but the right hand side of (11) is not a vector and the geometric product of this object hasn&#x27;t been defined. It was only defined for vectors in V and not for other elements of the exterior algebra.
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adam930about 10 years ago
There are two very good introductory textbooks on the subject by the same author:<p><a href="http://faculty.luther.edu/~macdonal/laga/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;faculty.luther.edu&#x2F;~macdonal&#x2F;laga&#x2F;</a> <a href="http://faculty.luther.edu/~macdonal/vagc/index.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;faculty.luther.edu&#x2F;~macdonal&#x2F;vagc&#x2F;index.html</a>
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jamessbabout 10 years ago
An article introducing Geometric Algebra (<i>A Unified Mathematical Language for Physics and Engineering</i>) was posted to HN (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8192054" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8192054</a>) and may be of interest.<p>It&#x27;s authors also have other articles and teaching resources on their website: <a href="http://geometry.mrao.cam.ac.uk/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;geometry.mrao.cam.ac.uk&#x2F;</a>