Special Relativity
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The book is divided into two sections, an introductory text and a more advanced text. Both texts cover the same topics. Undergraduates might compare their curriculum with the text and study appropriately.
Introductory text
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- The principle of relativity
- Frames of reference, events and transformations
- Special relativity
- The postulates of special relativity
- The modern approach to special relativity
- Spacetime
- The lightcone
- The Lorentz transformation equations
Simultaneity, time dilation and length contraction
- The relativity of simultaneity and the Andromeda paradox
- The nature of length contraction
- Evidence for length contraction, the field of an infinite straight current
- De Broglie waves
- The twin paradox
- The pole barn paradox
- Addition of velocities
- Introduction
- The aether drag hypothesis
- The Michelson-Morley experiment
- Mathematical analysis of the Michelson Morley Experiment
- Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction hypothesis
Faster than light signals, causality and Special Relativity
Advanced text
[edit | edit source]- Introduction
- The Lorentz transformation
- The linearity and homogeneity of spacetime
- The Lorentz transformation
- Length contraction, time dilation and phase
- Hyperbolic geometry
- Addition of velocities
- Acceleration transformation
- Relativistic waves
- Principle of Relativity Applied
- Characteristics of Relativistic Waves
- The Doppler Effect
- Vectors
- Matrices
- Linear Transformations
- Indicial Notation
- Analysis of curved surfaces and transformations