Introduction to Special Relativity (Dover Books on Physics)

This book was published in 1965, when there were some good introductions to special relativity available. Preparing to teach special relativity as part of my introductory (calculus-based) physics, I found this book to be just what I sought. It is well organized, clearly written in prose notably better than average for physics textbooks, and full of helpful diagrams. So I tried it. I continued using it for introductory special relativity until I retired in 2008. If I were still teaching today, I would still be using it. It addresses common sources of puzzlement head on. (These apparent paradoxes are easily resolved if one remembers that the slogans "moving clocks run slow" and "moving meter sticks are shortened" must be supplemented with the oft-forgotten but crucial "clock synchronization depends on reference frame.")As soon as I saw that Dover is keeping this book in print, I stopped searching for an introduction to special relativity for my grandson. I could not recommend an introductory physics book more highly. Six stars.

This is one of the best introductions to special relativity available, and given the price, the very best value. The presentation is fairly conventional, but somewhat more careful and detailed than most. The figures and explanations make very clear what is being measured and how, paying particular attention early on to the disposition of the clock or clocks used for time measurement, which is really key to all the kinematical effects. Common misunderstandings are also pointed out and explained.The author indeed makes things "as simple as possible, but no simpler," so there is no overly elaborate or cumbersome notation bogging down the development (which also made the book age very well). At the same time, four vectors and the relativity of the magnetic force are discussed in some detail. This book provides all you need for a solid understanding at this level. And if you intend to continue to more advanced mathematical treatments, you'll be ready. One slight drawback is the lack of answers to most of the exercises, but I still highly recommend this book.

Judging from the title one might expect this to be a relatively easy book to understand - it is not. It is introductory for a college level undergraduate physics course, and the author often chooses a relative complex approach, versus the more straightforward ones found in other introductory books. For instance, instead of restricting the discussion to only one spatial dimension, X, much of the text utilizes two dimensions, X and Y, greatly complicating the text. The twin paradox is discussed in terms of a version of special relativity that approximates acceleration, rather than evoking General Relativity as is done in most books, which I found to be interesting, but hard to follow. I got the impression that this approach was done more to illustrate the novel thinking of the author, rather than providing a clearer discussion. The book employs complex four-vector mathematics. For instance, there is a section on “The Lorentz Transformation as a Rotation in Four Dimensions”, which I consider to be much more than introductory in nature, and much of the last quarter of the book contains similar very complex material. For instance, the book also has a section on electric and magnetic fields that goes far beyond what is covered in any of the other introductory relativity texts that I have read. Surprisingly, the book does not cover world-lines, light cones or other space-time ideas, which I found to be a significant deficiency. There are exercise problems for each chapter, but solutions are provided for only a few of them, and where they are they are given as just final answers instead of being worked out in detail.The above comments not withstanding, I found things to like in the book, particularly the discussion of waves and how wave behavior makes the idea of the consistency of the speed of light expected and not as novel an idea as I had always considered it to be. Nonetheless, I recommend this book only as an adjunct to other more easily understood approaches and for a college level audience. This is especially true for a course that employs the level of complexity and mathematics used in this book. As a point of reference, I am a retired Materials Scientist, who has read a great many books on Special Relativity. I consider Mermin’s, “It’s about Time”, Taylor and Wheeler’s Spacetime Physics and especially Morin’s Special Relativity For the Enthusiastic Beginner”, to be much more readable introductory texts. They develop concepts in a more comprehensive manner and employ a much less complicated mathematical approach. Morin’s book is especially good and I highly recommend it.

I don't like to post reviews of products here, but this book is so good that it deserves the effort. Despite the fact there are so many good books about General Relativity (Schutz, Hartle, d'Inverno, MTW, etc), these books just "summarize" in the first chapters the basic ideas of Special Relativity (SR) with no "depth", because it's assumed the reader already knows the subject. However, finding a good book about SR is such a hard task (I'm sorry, but I don't like A.P. French, MIT course). In his book, J.H. Smith explains the key ideas of the theory in a clear and elegant way, using more a "physical intuition" point of view (more in the Einstein spirit) instead of a heavy mathematical and more "obscure" way, for example like the Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics. The author gives clear and very pedagogical examples for the reader to master the Lorentz transformations. The discussion of the "twin paradox" for exmaple, is one of the best I have found. I specially liked the chapter 12 about the four-momentum, including the applications of relativistic collisions. For self study (my case) this is one of the best books that I've found so far. I highly recommend it for undergraduate and even graduate students in Physics.

I have enjoyed reading this nice book on special relativity and recommend it for others interested in the subject.