What the HECK is a Tensor?!?

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[lucidmoses]

Apparently Tensors give you the same amount of stress not matter what orientation you describe it from. :p

[pghparkins]

He's did it. He actually did it. Years of "you don't want to do tensors if you can avoid them" convinced me it would never happen. Heading in!

[wayneyadams]

6:43 Finally! Someone who states explicitly that angular momentum is a pseudovector, something for which I get a lot of kickback (some of it insulting) whenever I say or write it. The very fact that the direction is arbitrarily assigned using a right-hand rule when a left-hand rule will work equally well should send up warning flags.

[joshmellon]

I owe you a great deal of thanks man. I'll be 2 years clean tomorrow, and when I was going through the worst part of kicking my habit it was your videos that kept my mind off of the pain. I had lost everything. My wife, my kid, my home, even wrecked my car. I laid awake every night going clean out of my mind, and it was watching your videos that kept me distracted enough to be able to deal with it. Prior to grabbing your phone and jumping on youtube all night the anxiety of withdrawal would drive me to go out and "find" a way to get well in the morning.

I absolutely love science and technology. In my 2 years clean I've built my "circuit room" which amounts to some electronics equipment, 3d printer, a computer, basically everything I can find to design and build the things I think up.

I am forever grateful for people like you on YouTube. You have so much knowledge about the things that we are all curious about, and the drive to share what you know is a beautiful thing. Keep it up man, and thank you from a fellow crazy..

[ScienceAsylum]

*Clarification 1:* At 6:06, I showed an animation where angular momentum goes from constant to variable in a coordinate translation. That is only one _example_ of how a pseudovector can misbehave under transformations. They can also pick up signs under reflections. They can even pick up entire coefficients under rotations and changes to non-Cartesian coordinates. It all depends on the pseudovector and the transformation. The point is that _real_ vectors don't do _any_ of this.

*Clarification 2:* At 2:06, I said "matrices and tensors are not the same thing." Matrices are just a way of organizing numbers and I mean it. It is true that all rank-2 tensors can be written as square matrices, but so can rank-2 _pseudotensors._ Vectors can be written as column (or row) matrices, but so can _pseudovectors._ *Matrices are just a way of organizing numbers.* Matrix operations do work the same way as tensor/pseudotensor operations, but only if you order the matrices correctly. With tensors/pseudotensors you don't have to worry about multiplication order. With matrices, you do. That's why using matrix notation is not recommended.

[tim]

So 40 years ago when I got my undergraduate, Nobody could explain it like this. My study group after about a week finally figured it out for ourselves. We knew why it was needed and what it did, but the actual gearshift eluded us for a bit. This guy is real good!

[rarra]

Software engineer here, with a lot of newly found love for physics because of this channel. Thank you Nick!

[x]

The ability that most life forms have to predict motion is pretty impressive and shows how important it is for survival.

[theonionpirate]

What I love about your channel is that you actually get into things at a somewhat sophisticated level, even with math, while still being entertaining and explaining things really well... and having great visuals. Most channels meant to explain science will either be dry if they go into detail and sophisticated math, or not go into detail or sophisticated math if they have good pedagogy and visuals.
I really can't overstate how awesome it is that you put it all together! This is an invaluable channel.

[LunarDelta]

Dude, your animations are beyond top notch. I don't think anyone else out there does science animations that are so attractive, informative, and easy to understand. They make some really complex concepts far easier to understand than they otherwise would be.

[globaldigitaldirectsubsidi]

You have educated me better than over a decade of physics teachers and you didn't get any tax money....

[Lucky]

I just got the notification for this and I immediately shouted "YES! I've been waiting so long for this!" I was chatting with my algebra student who was very amused at my sudden excitement but immediately said she was going to watch it too when I said it was by The Science Asylum.

[WillyKillya]

Q: who is more tense, Mister Tensor or Mister Tensor's son?

A: Mister Tensor's son, he is a little tensor.

[dinamosflams]

I swear this is the most underrated Channel on YouTube

[fberron]

I was stock with higher dimension tensors... And this really helped; Use: 'index notation, not matrix notation'
Thanks!

[nehamotwani]

In my bed, ready to sleep.


Things changed with one notification of crazy asylum.

[zackyezek]

Great job.

I had to master basic tensor algebra for General Relativity in college, and it took me a good month to sort of grasp what they were conceptually. You explained it better in 5 minutes than my college math professor did in a week. And he had the advantage of knowing his audience already knew vector calculus.



.

[ShermanSitter]

"A tensor is a number or collection of numbers that maintains its meaning under transformations." Thank you! That is a great sentence that I will repeat to myself 1000 times.

[RonLWilson]

Wow, this is great!

And I'm definitely going to have to watch this one three or four times for sure to absorb what you are saying here, not because it is not well said, but rather you are saying a lot, and saying things well worth rewatching to full get full jist of just what you're saying.

[shcxatter]

1:54 That right there did it! I never fully understood why are there so much individual types of forces applied to only 3 dimensions, and the way you showed it right there made it all clear, thank you!