I'm taking a graduate level general relativity course and it seems completely unintelligible. Has anyone else had the same experience? Has anyone else been able to understand it?|||That is generally only relevant to people who decide to take the class. I mean torture themselves.|||I took it last semester. Unfortunately, by the time we finished all the differential geometry stuff, the semester was over and we never got to apply it to anything. Frankly, I wasn't following the math too closely, since I figured I'd just get an overview and pick it up when we started applying it to something. Which we never did. So no, I didn't get a lot out of the course. But then, quantum made no sense to me the first time either - maybe I just need another 5 courses in GR. :)|||Yep. I took the course twice (once just for fun and once to get the credits when I needed them) and got an A+ in the exam. I did better in general relativity than in any other subject I was ever tested on.
General Relativity is quite easily intelligible. I learned most of it by myself by reading "Gravitation" by Misner, Thorne, Wheeler and "Gravitation and Cosmology" by Weinberg. Both books are classics and the authors go to great lengths to make the topic digestible.
Of course, I have to admit, that I also took a couple of classes on differential geometry (for mathematicians, not physicists) as a preparation. Once one understands the math from the ground up, the physics on the introductory level of a graduate course is relatively simple.
In comparison quantum field theory is much, much harder, mostly because it does not have nearly as neatly a mathematical structure as GR.
Just keep at it. It will come to you.
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