Relativity Made Relatively Easy: Volume 1

ISBN-13: 9780199662852 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 432 str.

Andrew M. Steane

Opis

Relativity Made Relatively Easy presents an extensive study of Special Relativity and a gentle (but exact) introduction to General Relativity for undergraduate students of physics. Assuming almost no prior knowledge, it allows the student to handle all the Relativity needed for a university course, with explanations as simple, thorough, and engaging as possible.
The aim is to make manageable what would otherwise be regarded as hard; to make derivations as simple as possible and physical ideas as transparent as possible. Lorentz invariants and four-vectors are introduced early on, but tensor notation is postponed until needed. In addition to the more basic ideas such as Doppler effect and collisions, the text introduces more advanced material such as radiation from accelerating charges, Lagrangian methods, the stress-energy tensor, and introductory General Relativity, including Gaussian curvature, the Schwarzschild solution, gravitational lensing, and black holes. A second volume will extend the treatment of General Relativity somewhat more thoroughly, and also introduce Cosmology, spinors, and some field theory.

Recenzje

The book has truly the potential to become a pivotal part of scholarship in physics. This lucid and thoughtful approach to taking the reader pedagogically through how Einsteinian relativity works, and how it supersedes the Newtonian construction with respect to explaining the basic principles of physical law, is comprehensive, thorough, innovative, challenging, and in many cases original. Steane's approach fills a gap in what in many university undergraduate courses has become a topic considered rather too briefly and in a rather too stereotyped manner, and which thereby has always denied physics graduates of the deeper insight into how Lorentz invariance is at the root of almost everything.

O autorze

Andrew M. Steane was born in Bath, England (1965) and educated at Christ's Hospital school and Oxford University. He has been Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford since 2002 and has been a Visiting Professor at various institutes. Steane was awarded the Maxwell Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics in 2000 for his work on quantum error correction. He has given numerous public lectures and school demonstrations in physics, and is the author of "The Wonderful World of Relativity" (OUP, Oxford 2011).