There are three changes in the second edition. First, with the help of readers and colleagues-thanks to all-I have corrected typographical errors and made minor changes in substance and style. Second, I have added a fewmore Exercises,especially at the end ofChapter4.Third, I have appended a section on Differential Geometry, the essential mathematical tool in the study of two-dimensional structural shells and four-dimensional general relativity. JAMES G. SIMMONDS vii Preface to the First Edition When I was an undergraduate, working as a co-op student at North Ameri­ can Aviation, I tried to learn something about tensors. In the Aeronautical Engineering Department at MIT, I had just finished an introductory course in classical mechanics that so impressed me that to this day I cannot watch a plane in flight-especially in a turn-without imaging it bristling with vec­ tors. Near the end of the course the professor showed that, if an airplane is treated as a rigid body, there arises a mysterious collection of rather simple­ looking integrals called the components of the moment of inertia tensor.

There are three changes in the second edition. First, with the help of readers and colleagues-thanks to all-I have corrected typographical errors and made minor changes in substance and style. Second, I have added a fewmore Exercises,especially at the end ofChapter4.Third, I have appended a section on Differential Geometry, the essential mathematical tool in the study of two-dimensional structural shells and four-dimensional general relativity. JAMES G. SIMMONDS vii Preface to the First Edition When I was an undergraduate, working as a co-op student at North Ameri­ can Aviation, I tried to learn something about tensors. In the Aeronautical Engineering Department at MIT, I had just finished an introductory course in classical mechanics that so impressed me that to this day I cannot watch a plane in flight-especially in a turn-without imaging it bristling with vec­ tors. Near the end of the course the professor showed that, if an airplane is treated as a rigid body, there arises a mysterious collection of rather simple­ looking integrals called the components of the moment of inertia tensor.