A Student's Guide to Special Relativity

A compact yet informative exploration of Special Relativity and its core ideas, also providing a preparatory route into General Relativity.

Norman Gray (Author)

9781108834094, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 February 2022

170 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.5 cm, 0.47 kg

'Professor Gray writes with humor and precision, and persistent readers will be rewarded. The book is heavily annotated with many helpful references … Highly recommended.' J. F. Burkhart, Choice

This compact yet informative Guide presents an accessible route through Special Relativity, taking a modern axiomatic and geometrical approach. It begins by explaining key concepts and introducing Einstein's postulates. The consequences of the postulates – length contraction and time dilation – are unravelled qualitatively and then quantitatively. These strands are then tied together using the mathematical framework of the Lorentz transformation, before applying these ideas to kinematics and dynamics. This volume demonstrates the essential simplicity of the core ideas of Special Relativity, while acknowledging the challenges of developing new intuitions and dealing with the apparent paradoxes that arise. A valuable supplementary resource for intermediate undergraduates, as well as independent learners with some technical background, the Guide includes numerous exercises with hints and notes provided online. It lays the foundations for further study in General Relativity, which is introduced briefly in an appendix.

Preface. Table of Aims. 1. Introduction
2. The axioms
3. Length contraction and time dilation
4. Spacetime and geometry
5. The Lorentz transformation
6. Vectors and kinematics
7. Dynamics
A. An overview of general relativity
B. Relativity's contact with experimental fact
C. Maths revision
D. How to do calculations – a recipe. Bibliography. Index.

Subject Areas: Relativity physics [PHR], Classical mechanics [PHD]