Product Description

This book is intended for undergraduates taking an introductory course on special relativity which is rather more conceptually and mathematically than experimentally orientated. A suitably prepared reader could use it for self-study. It assumes no prior knowledge of relativity. Thus it elaborates the underlying logic, dwells on the subleties and apparent paradoxes, and also contains a large collection of problems which should just about cover all the basic modes of thinking and calculating in special relativity. Much emphasis has been laid on developing the student's intuition for space-time geometry and four-tensor calculus; but the approach is not so dogmatically four-dimensional that three-dimensional methods are rejected our of hand when they yield a result more directly. This updated new edition contains additional examples and problems, and the chapter on relativistic mechanics of continua has been substantially rewritten.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #289778 in Books
• Published on: 1991-05-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 184 pages

Customer Reviews

A very nice technical introduction to the Theory of Special Relativity.
This book is a technical introduction written for people who have an undergraduate mathematical and classical physics (mechanics, electrodynamics) background but no prior knowledge of the Special Theory of Relativity.

The most prominent characteristic of this introduction is its more intuitive three dimensional approach of this unique theory of space and time. By this I mean that even though the four dimensional formalism of Special Relativity is fully presented with the appropriate tensor calculus, the writer prefers to point out the underlying three dimensional physics rather than the abstract space time formalism whose mastering is of course impertinent for a subsequent study of General Relativity. It is this wonderful feature which renders the book as an introduction and not a terrifying formalistic technical document for advanced readers.

One more thing that supports this approach is the reference and study of many of the so called "paradoxes". By giving the explanation of these paradoxes the writer succeeds to persuade the reader that the Theory of Special Relativity doesn't have anything to do with metaphysical phenomena of shrinking rods and clocks loosing their pace but it is a very logical theory about coincidences of events. When this fact is fully understood then one starts to wonder how mistaken and artificial were our previous notions about absolute space and time.

"Introduction to Special Relativity" is a self-consistent book containing all the needed mathematical calculus of tensors in a relevant appendix.

Last but not least is the excellent collection of exercises bonded in harmony with the theory previously presented in each chapter. These exercises are very carefully chosen in a way to support and extent the theory. The reader must try to solve as much of them as possible because they are equally valuable and educational with the rest of the text.

I recommend this beautiful and well written book to any beginner who wants to understand the physics of the Theory of Special Relativity and not just learn how to play with four dimensional symbols. I also recommend this book to tutors who I believe will find a lot of ideas on how to present the seemingly abstract ideas of this theory without causing terror and confusion to their students.

Contents
1. The foundations of Special Relativity
2. Relativistic kinematics
3. Relativistic optics
4. Spacetime
5. Mechanics of relativistic particles
6. Electromagnetics in vacuum
7. Relativistic Mechanics of continous media.

Appendix
Tensors in Special Relativity

Not worth it....There are better books out there
I own this book and so I use it and to be fair it has most of the stuff you need for Special relativity in it. BUT THERE ARE LOTS OF BOOKS ON SPECIAL RELATIVITY. This book only has like 100 and something odd pages in it. So just photocopying it would be cheaper. (Don't, buying books is always much nicer). But the point is its not value for money. There are lots of other Special relativity books and ones with more problems with worked solutions. So I would look around in a library or online for one that will be of more use. Plus this book's layout is pretty old looking and needs a better font type etc.

In summary its a nice small book but there are lots of better ones out there.