Understanding Time and Space is an invitation to the theory of relativity for anyone who is now or has ever been an inquisitive high school student.
Relativity can seem violently counterintuitive. It says that different observers can describe the world in very different ways and they can all be correct. It helps to be reminded that you've known this since childhood, when you learned that the direction you call left might be the same as the direction I call right, and we can both be correct. This book illuminates and demystifies the theory of relativity through repeated analogies to that kind of everyday experience. Dozens of drawings, analogous to the maps we all use to navigate through ordinary space, emphasize that relativity is a branch of geometry — the geometry of navigating through that more mysterious venue called spacetime.
The reader is assisted by exercises sprinkled throughout, and by 'dangerous curve' sections that identify and combat the most common misunderstandings.
Steven Landsburg is a professor at the University of Rochester. He has published widely in mathematics, economics, physics and philosophy. His hobby is answering questions about relativity on the internet, which has taught him a lot about how to be helpful.
Contents:
- Preface
- Frames in Space:
- How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?
- Frames of Reference
- Invariants: What We All Agree On
- Lost (and Found) in the Desert
- Invariants in the Desert
- Frames in Spacetime:
- Frames in Spacetime
- The First Principle of Relativity
- The Second (and Last!) Principle of Relativity
- Comparing Frames:
- Changing Frames: The Lorentz Transformation
- The Relativity of Simultaneity
- Maps of the World
- Spacetime and the Desert
- Understanding Time: A Journey Around the Stars:
- A Journey to the Stars
- A Journey from the Stars
- A Round-Trip Journey: How Travel Keeps You Young
- A Birthday Party
- The Order of Events:
- What We Can All Agree On: The Spacetime Interval
- What We Can't All Agree On: The Future and the Past
- Racing Against Light (Spoiler: You'll Always Lose)
- Relativity at Everyday Speeds
- Adding Velocities
- Understanding Space: Distances and Lengths
- Distances
- Lengths
- Contraction in Action: Part I
- Contraction in Action: Part II
- Appendices:
- Hints and Solutions for All the Exercises
- How You Could Have Discovered the Lorentz Transformations
Readership: Physics students (High school or under graduates) or the general audience with some interest in General Relativity.
