Introducing Relativity [Paperback]

Bruce Bassett (Author), Ralph Edney (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 28, 2002 | Series: Introducing

It is now a century since Einstein's theories of Special and General Relativity revolutionized our view of the universe. Introducing Relativity plots a visually accessible course through Einstein's thought experiments that have given shape to contemporary physics. Scientists from Isaac Newton to Stephen Hawking add their unique contributions to this story. Einstein's legacy is reviewed in the most advanced frontiers of physics today - black holes, gravitational waves, the accelerating universe and string theory.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bruce Bassett is a cosmologist and lecturer at the University of Cape Town and the South African Astronomical Observatory. Ralph Edney trained as a mathematician, and has worked as a teacher,journalist, illustrator and political cartoonist. He has illustrated anumber of Introducing titles. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Totem Books; Second Edition edition (July 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1840467576
• ISBN-13: 978-1840467574
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,642,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great first step to Einstein's relativity, October 17, 2002

By 

Criag David (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Introducing Relativity (Paperback)

Wow! This is an awesome little book. I love the "Introducing" series but sometimes I find their work a little too basic. Not this time. This is a graphic highway into the mind of Einstein - the 4th dimension, curved space and time...its all here but without the maths...just the ideas. The middle is the hardest, while the last third of the book covers current cosmology and all the latest advances in our understanding of the universe.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Space is curved, not flat and gravitational waves can be manipulated to stretch time which is no longer fixed., March 30, 2007

By 

OverTheMoon ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Introducing Relativity (Paperback)

2nd edit
"Introducing Relativity" is explained well enough to be able to get it almost on the first read. Revision always reveals more (this is inherent in what it predicts and is the reason why I edited this review) but relativity is here for anyone who wants to know it.

In terms of the "Introducing..." science series this book complements "Introducing the Universe" and is an extension of "Introducing Newton and classical physics" but it turns out to be the easiest of the three to understand. It also harmonizes Hawking's "A brief history of time" who gives relativity a chapter but this book brings it out more.

Einstein became a household name with his formula E=MC2 meaning energy is mass. As a consequence he established that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light because the energy required to accelerate mass to this speed would be infinite because acceleration also produces an increase in mass.

Einstein understood Newton. Newton showed with his laws of motion how matter moves with and without force and established gravitational effects while Maxwell unified magnetism and electricity by showing that shifts in either electricity or magnetism produces a shift in the other. Newton however also implied that there was no absolute standard of rest because everything is moving. There was no such thing as absolute position or space in his mind. Newton did not believe that time was part of space but separate and could be measured with a good enough clock.

Reality without time is actually like saying that everything is flat and we now know this is an error. This flatness can be imagined by saying that when all questions about matter (sun, moon, planets and forces) was connected through Newton's mechanics of explaining nature it was explained `linked' in a flat sort of way.

Einstein discovered because of the properties of observing light that these `links' have an underlying nature that would change the Newtonian model with his special relativity (SR).

In SR Einstein showed time dilation at near light speeds. A simple theoretical model for this is a ball bouncing between the floor and ceiling. Our concern is just the distance up and down. If we put the room on a train and watch this as the train goes by, the ball also travels the distance the train moved so in one bounce it doesn't just travel up and down, it travels diagonally for us. The diagonal up and down is longer than just up and down. This means that for the observer on the ground the distance traveled was more than what the observer saw while in the room. There is a difference and so time can dilate.

Newton's flat model was not in agreement with SP. Time could change relative to the observer. Only the speed of light remained constant and the law that it could not be broken.

Now that Einstein had changed some of Newton's laws he sought to find how it extended to the rest of Newton's laws. Einstein needed to include velocity in SR in order to solve the simultaneity problem where a force like gravity and velocity can be confused if we don't have a window to observe from while inside the box being pulled by a planet or towed by a rocket.

Einstein eventually realized that gravitational mass and inertial mass are the same which explains this. Linking gravity with inertial mass meant Einstein could under more about this strange force of gravity. This resulted in GR, showing the shape and function of spacetime in the light cone event sliced into four dimensional space with curves called geodesics that matter naturally follows when others forces don't change act on the matter.

Imagine a trampoline made from very flexible material. When you role balls onto the material it creates dips in the plane creating a terrain. For Einstein this created natural curves for things to follow. That is it, GR!... okay so Einstein went more to show that features of this terrain cause affects on what we observe relatively in SR. The biggest feature is how it influences light (it can bend it) and of course the `dragon eating tail' mystery of GR whereby matter cause geometry to curve and geometry tells matter how to move.

There is whole new level of thought with GR. Its discovery meant GR needed to be calculated back into what physicists knew. The mathematics had to adapt and change to include Einstein's new equations and tensors.

Einstein discovered with GR that gravity travels in waves (is not just a strange mystery force, although it is unusual in that it is very weak) and these waves travel at the speed of light and that waves and curves in spacetime are subject to stretching. These gravity waves that are stretched by matter travelling in spacetime are called gravitational waves and were predicted by GR.

GR is summed up by John Wheeler who said "mass grips space by telling it how to curve, space grips mass by telling it how to move."

Core material:
Space and time
Newton and gravity
Maxwell
Spacetime
Special relativity
Time dilation
Muons
E=MC2
Anti-matter
Simultaneity problem and general relativity
Slicing spacetime
General relativity
Equivalence principle
Gravitational mass and inertial mass are the same
Matter follows geodesics unless acted on by a force
Spacelike, null, timelike
Metrics
Spacetime geodesics
Tensors and field equations
Positive and negative curved space
Intrinsic curvature
Extrinsic curvature
Vectors
Light bends
Black holes
Gravitational waves and stretching space
Interference

The book's technical value finishes at around this chapter on Interference. After that we get 50 pages on the standard model of the universe, Hawking and superstring. It really isn't much to do with relativity and you get better information on these topics on more specialized books. I would have preferred the 50 pages to be more about relativity explanations although I understand a need for closure somehow.

"Introducing time" also has relativity references. Overall this is excellent.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE EINSTEIN..., November 24, 2002

By 

Joshua Bryer (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Introducing Relativity (Paperback)

At last! A book on relativity that the layman can understand with absolute clarity.

Authors Bruce Bassett et al deserve a literary medal for making such a rich topic so easy to digest.

They write with the consummate ease of travel writers.
Destination: space-time.
Mode of transport: Einstein's mind.

It's a complex task making relativity simple.
I'm really grateful someone finally did it!