David McComb

What's so special about Special Relativity? David McComb

This is the story of two men: Galileo Galilei and Albert Einstein. Galileo saw what must be true and expressed it as a rule. Einstein saw that there had to be an exception to Galileo's rule, and had the courage to say so. Galileo's rule is what we now call Relativity, while Einstein's modification is what we now know as Special Relativity. This book explains the consequences of Special Relativity, including time dilation, the `twins paradox' and the mass energy equivalence that accounts for the forces which bind nuclei together. It then goes on to introduce General Relativity, leading on to Einstein's theory of gravity and the concept of `black holes.