Special Relativity

Special Relativity: A Heuristic Approach is an intermediate textbook on relativity unique both in its approach and its content. The book approaches relativity with the notion that Lorentz transformations are the key to understanding the subject. Once they are derived as coordinate transformations that leave the distance in the two-dimensional spacetime unchanged and later generalized to four dimensions, Lorentz transformations are applied to a multitude of examples (many unique to this book) to illustrate their power and immunity from mistakes that other approaches may entail (as demonstrated in Problem 7.1).

The content of the book is also unique. While topics such as interstellar travel and relativistic photography are either completely ignored or only mentioned in passing in one or two paragraphs in other textbooks, this book devotes two complete chapters to these topics. The interstellar travel is in particular timely because of the interest in projects such as Breakthrough Starshot, which aims to send “nanocrafts” to Alpha Centauri. Other topics unique to the book are an accessible discussion of the Dirac equation and the discovery of antimatter, as well as an easy-to-understand introduction to the big bang and early universe.

Key Features

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  Provides a heuristic derivation of the Minkowskian distance formula after deriving the Euclidean distance formula for the flatlanders.

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  Emphasizes Lorentz transformations as the key to understanding special relativity, and provides countless examples (some appearing for the first time) of their use.

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  Provides a reader-friendly introduction to tensor algebra and how it is used in special relativity.

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  Features two complete chapters devoted to interstellar travel and relativistic photography.

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  Written in a very accessible style.

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  All derivations are worked out and explained in detail.

Dr. Sadri Hassani is an Adjunct Professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, and a Professor Emeritus at Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA. With over 30 years’ experience in teaching various physics courses, he is the author of several books at the introductory, intermediate, and advanced undergraduate and graduate levels.

This site provides the following resource:

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  Solutions Manual(opens in new tab/window): The manual provides detailed solutions to close to three hundred end-of-chapter problems in the book.