"The beginning of last century witnessed two major revolutions in the physical sciences which changed profoundly our perception of space and time and our views on the structure of matter. They are known as The Theory of Relativity for the first, and Quantum Mechanics, for the second. They both have a well deserved reputation of complexity and this has scared people away. Only specialised professionals dared to study and understand them. Yet, both are omnipresent in our everyday lives. The tiny chips which form the heart of our smartphones could not be designed without quantum mechanics and our GPS would be grossly inaccurate without the theory of relativity. Maybe it is time to try to demystify these theories, make them accessible to those among the younger generation who are interested, well motivated, and have followed a good science course at High School.
This book tries to meet this challenge for the theory of Relativity. By 'demystifying' I do not mean a kind of vulgarisation which avoids the difficulties by offering more or less convincing plausibility arguments. The ambition of this book is to explain every point by presenting a rigorous and complete derivation. It starts from first principles, sets the axioms, and develops the theory step by step in a fully deductive way. Every assumption is solidly anchored in experimental results.
The book contains two volumes. In the first we find the general principles and the main results, first for the special theory, (chapters 1 to 5) and then for the general theory of relativity (chapters 6 and 7). More advanced points are left for the second volume. The book is not "easy" and the reader should follow every step carefully and repeat the calculations, but the end result is highly rewarding. At the end he, or she, will have a very good working knowledge of this very beautiful theory. A great help is provided by well chosen problems and exercises which we find at the end of each chapter. I strongly advise the reader to try hard to solve them. The solutions can be found at the end of the second volume, but it would be a mistake to look there directly for the answers.
There exist many excellent books on the theory of relativity but, contrary to most of them, the author of this one does not require the reader to have a background in physics and mathematics beyond what one can reasonably expect from a good high school graduate. The result is amazing. Incredible as it may sound, the author wins his bet. He shows that the theory of relativity is not "difficult". It is fully accessible to the kind of readership he set to meet. It is the book I wish I had 65 years ago, when I finished high school."
-Professor and Researcher Jean Iliopoulos, recipient of the 2007 Dirac Prize
"I certainly think the book is very worthwhile. It fills a gap in the literature, in that special relativity in itself is not so much taught in the curriculum, undergraduate or graduate, as it is typically discussed in a more summary form in other courses. In the courses where it is more extensively used as a tool, the physical consequences are not brought out so much as the technical and mathematical aspects. Your book makes the physical consequences concrete and goes beyond the simple demonstrations to allow a fuller understanding of the underlying circumstances, e.g. the way the clock synchronization requirement brings about both time dilation and length contraction."
-Ryan Rohm, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"An excellent approach, and a thorough treatment of the subject."
---Michael Dine, Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP)
