General Relativity

Jan de Boer

First class: Monday September 6

Last class: Monday December 6

Question session: Monday December 13

Written Exam: Monday December 20

lecture times: Mondays 14.00-17.00

room: I3.01 (except on October 4, then in C.210)
(that's in building number 170 on this map)

credits: 6EC


This course consists of a basic introduction to general relativity. The course will more or less follow the book Sean Carroll, Spacetime and Geometry (Pearson, 2003). A shorter version of the book, without exercises, are the lecture notes by Sean Carroll, which can be obtained for free from his website (see the 3rd link below). Below I will probably keep track of the topics covered each week, so that you can see where we stand in the class. There are many books about general relativity, and there is an astonishing amount of material available on the web, so it shouldn't be too hard to find additional background material. Two books worth mentioning are There are several lecture notes available on the web, such as (list taken from Sean Carroll's webpage) Other useful general relativity links are (again taken from Sean Carroll's webpage) The course will contain various exercises. We will discuss these in class. Once every three weeks or so a set of exercises will be given which should be handed in. They will be graded, and completing these successfully can yield an upgrade of final mark on the written exam.