» The Principle of Relativity (Dover Books on Physics)

The Principle of Relativity (Dover Books on Physics) Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: The Principle of Relativity
Comment: I'm not happy with this book at all. I'm not a scientist outside of the field of information technology and I want something to explain Einstein's theories that I could read. I read such a book when I was young. It's out of print, but you can purchase it on Amazon used. It's entitled "Relativity: The Special and the General Theory--A Clear Explanation that Anyone Can Understand" by Albert Einstein.

That did it for me, this book put me to sleep.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: The Principle of Relativity
Comment: This book presents Einstein's orginal papers on relativity along with many other "classics" on the subject. A good understanding of college math and physics is a must.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: A History of Relativity
Comment: Dover must be commended for re-printing this collection of 'seminal' papers which cover the development of Relativity. This collection includes Lorentz's papers "Michelson's Interference Experiment" & "Electromagnetic Phenomena ..." and Minkowski's "Space and Time". The latter was instrumental in forging the notion of Minkowski 'space' - and forever altered our conception of how we view time vis-a-vis space. Additional notes by Sommerfield are present as an appendix to Minkowski's paper.

All this is in addition to the famous papers by Einstein which gave birth to Special & General Relativity. In particular, "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" is, of course, a classic - but a tough read. The paper on Special Relativity, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", on the other hand, is easily accesible to anyone acquainted with high school mathematics.

Even for the non-physicist, with a suitable grounding in the requisite mathematics, this book is a real gem. In general, it serves an excellent companion to Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity, Fifth Edition: Including the Relativistic Theory of the Non-Symmetric Field (Princeton Science Library) and makes for a priceless addition to a personal library.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: High school maths needed
Comment: One of the truly amazing things about the Special Theory is that you only need a decent grasp of high school mathematics and science to fully understand the two original papers. (Depending on your high school you may need to brush up on partial derivatives, but that's all.)

The General Theory is something else again, but by reading around the equations and accepting the descriptions of what is being solved you can still gain some incredible insights into a great intellectual achievement.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: How science should be written
Comment: Reading the original papers would be best, but if you don't read German then the Dover collection is the next best thing. In the paper on special relativity, the Lorentz transformations are derived via formulating and solving a first order pde, a treatment that no textbook presents (first order pdes aren't taught in math physics, in spite of the fact that every set of first order autonomous odes generates a first order pde). It took my teaching the subject to advanced undergrads in later years to realize what many others have by now noticed, namely, you don't need two postulates for special relativity. "Galilean invariance" is enough. The constancy of the speed of light follows from the requirement that there is no special reference frame.

Einstein's presentation of GR is unsurpassed for conciseness and clarity, is a model for other researchers to follow when writing papers. Here, he introduces the famous misconception (corrected today in the better texts like Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler) that general covariance is a physical principle. Well, even the greatest minds make mistakes.

Feynman wrote well, but no scientist to date has written better than Einstein.

---

More Reviews for The Principle of Relativity (Dover Books on Physics)