A Student's Guide to Special Relativity

This guide provides an accessible route through Special Relativity, explaining key concepts, introducing Einstein's postulates, and demonstrating the simplicity of the core ideas through a modern axiomatic and geometrical approach. It is a valuable supplementary resource for intermediate undergraduates and independent learners with some technical background, and lays the foundations for further study in General Relativity.

Format: Hardback
Length: 170 pages
Publication date: 03 February 2022
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

This comprehensive guide offers a user-friendly pathway into the realm of Special Relativity, employing a modern axiomatic and geometrical approach. It commences by elucidating fundamental concepts and presenting Einstein's postulates, which serve as the foundation for this theory. The subsequent chapters delve into the qualitative and quantitative consequences of these postulates, encompassing phenomena such as length contraction and time dilation. By utilizing the mathematical framework of the Lorentz transformation, these concepts are interconnected, and their applications are extended to kinematics and dynamics. This volume showcases the inherent simplicity of the core principles of Special Relativity, while simultaneously acknowledging the challenges associated with cultivating new intuitions and addressing the apparent paradoxes that arise. As a valuable supplementary resource for intermediate undergraduates and independent learners with a technical background, the guide includes an abundance of exercises accompanied by hints and notes accessible online. Furthermore, it serves as a solid foundation for further exploration into General Relativity, which is briefly introduced in an appendix.

Weight: 508g
Dimension: 157 x 236 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781108834094