Relativity: A Very Short Introduction

Another great Very Short Introduction, cutting out all but the most simple mathematics on the way to an explanation of one of the great scientific achievements of the last century.

To understand what is relatively. It is one of the great book in my opinion.

I must first of all confess that this was not my first approximation to the topic so I do not know if someone with no experience with the subject will have the same experience than me. That said, I was not trained as a physicist, but I always was fascinated by it and its consequences on how we ought to understand the world around us.You can read this book in very little time (it took me 2 days, but then again I couldn't put the book down) but it is extremely informative. Professor Stannard managed to cover an enormous amount of material without *ever* making the text overly dense. Indeed, of all my approximations to the Theory of Relativity, this is by far the best. It really dissipated some questions I had on the topic that were not well addressed in other mediums. Some mathematics are indeed used but they are never exceedingly complex and, more importantly, truly help illuminate the concepts at hand rather than make it feel more confusing.

This is the first book in the "A Very Short Introduction" series I have read. Slightly larger than seven inches by four inches, and a bit over 100 pages long, they are diminutive books for sure. This one on relativity, I found very interesting. Relativity is a topic I have always had difficulty wrapping my head around but Stannard does a pretty good job of making the subject sink in.The book is divided into two sections. In the first he covers special relativity, and, in the second, he covers general relativity. In the preface, he mentions some ideas about space, time, and matter that we might take for granted in our Newtonian world. In the first section he redefines five common sense ideas: we are all in the same three-dimensional space, time passes the same for everyone, the idea of simultaneity, there is no speed limit, and matter is conserved - it can neither be created nor destroyed. In addressing these topics, Stannard delves into time dilation, length contraction, the twin paradox, loss of simultaneity, space-time diagrams, four dimensionality, and the ultimate speed of the universe - whew! All interesting stuff for sure. I particularly enjoyed the section on the twin paradox - and Stannard's clear explanation - where one twin travels to another far away planet and back at near the speed of light, only to find that the other twin has aged considerably.Note that Stannard does use some formulas to demonstrate the concepts, but don't worry, if you have a basic background in algebra, it should all make sense to you. The formulas, I think, are necessary to convey a proper understanding of the material, but even if you are not up to par on your math, he does a good job of explaining the theory so you shouldn't have a problem here. He concludes with a discussion of various interstellar phenomena, such as quasars, pulsars, black holes, virtual particles, critical density, Hubble's law, and more.This book was well written in an explanatory fashion, so I think I will be checking some of the other titles in this series, of which there are many.

Ich habe jetzt endlich verstanden, wo und wann die Relativität zuschlägt.Die Zeitdilatation und die Längenkontraktion ist mir jetzt vertraut.Beweise für die Zeitdilatation sind ja vorhanden. Wie die Längenkontraktiondurch den Flugzeugtest und den Myonenversuch tangiert wird, wurde nicht erwähnt.