A Student's Guide to Special Relativity

A compact yet informative exploration of Special Relativity and its core ideas, also providing a preparatory route into General Relativity.

Written for intermediate undergraduate students and independent learners with basic calculus, this Guide covers all of the core ideas of Special Relativity. It does so by using a modern, geometrical approach, which prepares the reader well for further study of General Relativity.This compact yet informative Guide presents an accessible route through Special Relativity, taking a modern axiomatic and geometrical approach. It begins by explaining key concepts and introducing Einstein's postulates. The consequences of the postulates – length contraction and time dilation – are unravelled qualitatively and then quantitatively. These strands are then tied together using the mathematical framework of the Lorentz transformation, before applying these ideas to kinematics and dynamics. This volume demonstrates the essential simplicity of the core ideas of Special Relativity, while acknowledging the challenges of developing new intuitions and dealing with the apparent paradoxes that arise. A valuable supplementary resource for intermediate undergraduates, as well as independent learners with some technical background, the Guide includes numerous exercises with hints and notes provided online. It lays the foundations for further study in General Relativity, which is introduced briefly in an appendix.