About the Book:
Most of the available texts on Special Relativity leave the impression that they could well have been written a half-century ago. In contrast, this recently published text presents a modern view of relativity, including the most recent experimental results. The book emphasizes that Special Relativity is a theory of the geometry of spacetime, and accordingly, uses an abundance of spacetime diagrams and geometrical arguments in explanations and derivations. It presents clear qualitative explanations of the fundamental concepts and also the necessary quantitative mathematical details.
It discusses not only the classic experimental tests of Special Relativity, but also the most recent experimental tests, such as new measurements of the one-way speed of light. It draws attention to various practical and engineering applications of Special Relativity, such as GPS, VLBI, high-voltage X-ray and TV tubes, and medical accelerators.
The first four chapters discuss relativity before and after Einstein – the Lorentz transformation, time dilation, length contraction, the famous paradoxes, and relativistic kinematics and dynamics. These four chapters constitute the core of the book, and by themselves suffice for a brief introductory course. The next two chapters deal with collisions of relativistic particles and the implications of relativity for electricity & magnetism. The final chapter gives a brief survey of the fundamental ideas of General Relativity.
Additional Features Include:
• Tables summarizing all the experimental tests
• Worked examples in all chapters
• Nearly 200 chapter-end problems
• Instructor Solutions Manual for all problems
• Extensive guide to further reading
About the Author:
Hans C. Ohanian received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and Ph.D. from Princeton University, where he worked with John A. Wheeler. He has taught relativity at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, at Union College, and most recently, at the Cursos de Verano de la UNED, Spain. In addition to this book, he has written half a dozen other textbooks: Physics, Principles of Physics, Principles of Quantum Mechanics, Modern Physics, Classical Electrodynamics, and jointly with Remo Ruffini, Gravitation and Spacetime.