|
Loading... Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Timeby Richard P. Feynman
LibraryThing recommendationsMember recommendationsLoading...
won't like
will probably not like
will probably like
will like
will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. “Whenever the predictions of Einstein have been found to differ from the ideas of Newtonian mechanics, Nature has chosen Einstein’s.” While the truth of the laws of physics rests upon mathematics, and physics is a fascinating field, chalk-board notes presenting the mathematics behind the laws of physics do not necessarily make for enjoyable reading (unless you like reading about math). Culled from the famous Feynman Lectures on Physics, these six selections want to explain relativity, but discontinuities, reiterations, and interjections from absent lectures remind a reader that the book is cobbled together. “When the outsider sees the man in the space ship lighting a cigar, all the actions appear to be slower than normal…Even those ideas which have been held for a very long time and which have been accurately verified might be wrong…If we have a set of ‘strange’ ideas, such as that time goes slower when one moves, whether we like them or do not like them is an irrelevant question…The man who has felt the accelerations is the one who would be the younger…What we mean by ‘right now’ is a mysterious thing which we cannot define and we cannot affect, but it can affect us later, or we could have affected it if we had done something far enough in the past…An object always moves from one place to another so that a clock carried on it gives a longer time than it would on any other possible trajectory.” Planet Porter Caerbannog Rabbit Ale A selection of pieces from his series of lectures on Physics. Accessible and inspirational. Maths required. no reviews | add a review
References to this work on external resources.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Book description |
|
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:52 -0400)
The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details.
Quick Links |
This book, while still intending to educate the newcomer, is farther down the track, assuming elementary algebra, calculus and physics. In this case, elementary means elementary college level, not typical high school classes.
Do you have to have this to get through the chapters? No. However, without it, much of the content will be meaningless...in the sense that you'll just have to assume he's not talking baloney. You'd probably be better off finding an overview article on these topics somewhere on the Web and reading it. This material is from actual undergraduate lectures given by Feynman and the approach is correspondingly rigorous.
Feynman has a marvelous gift for making the esoteric understandable and entertaining. It's hard to imagine anyone could do a better job of giving an introduction to relativity. Nonetheless, these are "not so easy" compared to the first book. (