1,137 books
—
4,718 voters
Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Relativity: The Special and the General Theory” as Want to Read:
Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
by
,
An accesible version of Einstein's masterpiece of theory, written by the genius himself
According to Einstein himself, this book is intended "to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theore ...more
According to Einstein himself, this book is intended "to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theore ...more
Paperback, 130 pages
Published
July 25th 2006
by Penguin Classics
(first published 1916)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
Relativity,
please sign up.
Popular Answered Questions
Community Reviews
Showing 1-30
This is the copy that I wanted. In his own words, he describes conceptually the theory of special and general relativity. He uses very clever and easy to understand theoretical and real situations to guide your understanding towards an omega point. I bought this book at special price from here:
https://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Spe...
https://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Spe...
Some years ago in France a book by Jean-François Gautier appeared, entitled Does the universe exist?.
Good question.
What if the universe were a concept like cosmic ether, or phlogiston, or the conspiracy of the Elders of Zion?
Philosophically, Gautier’s arguments make sense.
The idea of the universe, as the totality of the cosmos, is one that comes from the most ancient cosmographies, cosmologies, and cosmogonies. But can one describe, as if seeing it from above, something within which we are cont ...more
Preface
Note to the Fifteenth Edition
--Relativity
Appendices:
1. Simple Derivation of the Lorentz Transformation
2. Minowski's Four-dimensional Space ("World")
3. The Experimental Confirmation of the General Theory of Relativity
(a) Motion of the Perihelion of Mercury
(b) Deflection of Light by a Gravitational Field
(c) Displacement of Spectral Lines towards the Red
4. The Structure of Space according to the General Theory of Relativity
5. Relativity and the Problem of Space
Bibliography
Index
Note to the Fifteenth Edition
--Relativity
Appendices:
1. Simple Derivation of the Lorentz Transformation
2. Minowski's Four-dimensional Space ("World")
3. The Experimental Confirmation of the General Theory of Relativity
(a) Motion of the Perihelion of Mercury
(b) Deflection of Light by a Gravitational Field
(c) Displacement of Spectral Lines towards the Red
4. The Structure of Space according to the General Theory of Relativity
5. Relativity and the Problem of Space
Bibliography
Index
(نمیدانم چرا همه مرا دوست دارند ولی کسی مرا درک نمی کند...)
این جمله انیشتین بسیار غریب است و تا وقتی زتده بود سعی داشت که به جهان اعلام کند که پدیده ای تصادفی وجود ندارد و (خدا مشغول تاس بازی نیست)
بعضی از جالب ترین بخش های این نظریه...
نزدیک شدن به سرعت نور امکان دارد اما رسیدن و یا رساندن یک جسم به سرعت نور امکان ندارد زیرا برای رسیدن یک جسم به سرعت نور ،به بی نهایت انرژی نیاز است و جرم جسم بی نهایت می شود و این امر در دنیای فیزیکی امکان ندارد....به عبارت دیگر هیچ چیز مادی نمی تواند سریع تر از ن ...more
این جمله انیشتین بسیار غریب است و تا وقتی زتده بود سعی داشت که به جهان اعلام کند که پدیده ای تصادفی وجود ندارد و (خدا مشغول تاس بازی نیست)
بعضی از جالب ترین بخش های این نظریه...
نزدیک شدن به سرعت نور امکان دارد اما رسیدن و یا رساندن یک جسم به سرعت نور امکان ندارد زیرا برای رسیدن یک جسم به سرعت نور ،به بی نهایت انرژی نیاز است و جرم جسم بی نهایت می شود و این امر در دنیای فیزیکی امکان ندارد....به عبارت دیگر هیچ چیز مادی نمی تواند سریع تر از ن ...more
I hope that no one will ask me what was this book about .
düzgün olarak hareket etmekte olan bir tren vagonunun penceresinden yere fırlatmadan bir taş bırakıyorum.
böyle bir kitabın olduğundan birçok kişinin haberi bile yok.
ama, evet, einstein'ın ''fizikle pek uğraşmamış olan okuyucuların ayrıntılara boğulup ağaçlardan ormanı göremez hale gelmesini istemedim'' düşüncesiyle yazdığı bir kitabı var, hem de ne kitap.
bilim adamı kimliğinin yanında ne kadar nahif bir insan olduğunu düşünerek okuyorsunuz, çok iyi bir öğretmen olduğunun da farkına varıyorsu ...more
Dec 01, 2012
مديحة حوري
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
أينشتاين-والنسبية
أول احتكاك فعلي بيني وبين نظرية النسبية وبالمعادلات الرياضية
أول كتاب قرأته في مكتبة الجيش لأينشتاين ومرفق بالمعادلات
استمتعت به
وهو أول من فتح لي باب التساؤل حول: كيف أصوغ معادلة بمنتهى البساطة
أول كتاب قرأته في مكتبة الجيش لأينشتاين ومرفق بالمعادلات
استمتعت به
وهو أول من فتح لي باب التساؤل حول: كيف أصوغ معادلة بمنتهى البساطة
Nu am niciun motiv să mă îndoiesc de faptul că Einstein a simplificat teoria sa în această carte pe care, în prefață, el însuși o consideră prizabilă inclusiv de către "cititorul neinițiat în fizică". Nu mă îndoiesc că intențiile autorului au fost bune. Bașca apreciez exemplele concrete, gen aruncarea unei pietre dintr-un vagon de tren și calcularea traiectoriei/vitezei sale față de terasamentul căii ferate. De altfel, mai toate exemplele implică trenuri, un adevărat laitmotiv al cărții. Cu toat
...more
Oct 19, 2007
Rob
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
people who already know about relativity
Shelves:
non-fiction-for-egghead-spacealiens
edit: i wrote the 4-star review below before reading the fifth appendix. i mean, who could imagine that an appendix could change anything? well, this one did. all the chapters in the body of the book are 2 or 3 pages. Appendix V is a 20-page essay, written 36 years after the rest of the book and just 3 years before einstein died. it is a tour de force on the history, philosophy, and psychology (i kid you not) of the scientific understanding of empty space. it was shocking, thrilling, amazing. th
...more
The aim of this book is to introduce people without a strong physics (or even scientific) background to the special and general theories of relativity - theories that Einstein was the primary developer of. Einstein assumes the reader has passes a "university matriculation exam." What that meant in the first half of the 20th Century, I don't know but in practice what's required is the level of algebra I had by age 16 plus a smattering of mentions of the square root of minus 1. I also found basic
...more
This book by Dr. Einstein is very well written, though you will find the anatomy of sentences a little unusual. Well this should not be a problem considering the theory's difficulty level. Though the theory is very simple mathematically (special theory of relativity I'm talking about), but the case is reverse when it comes to understand it intuitively. It defies the common sense. And that's what the book is about. It changes your outlook, the way you see the nature and gives you a new and better
...more
Jan 12, 2010
Erik Graff
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
everyone
Recommended to Erik by:
Peter Smith
Shelves:
sciences
As a kid my serious interests were scientific. I collected feathers, insects, rocks and fossils; maintained an aerospace scrapbook; kept a journal about space exploration; and read a lot of science books ranging from popular stuff and textbooks to serious works from the library which I hardly understood. My greatest intellectual interests by junior high were in cosmology and astronomy.
During middle school, or possibly during the freshman year in high school, I started going to the library to rea ...more
During middle school, or possibly during the freshman year in high school, I started going to the library to rea ...more
(The Times from Nov. 10, 1919, left; Nov. 16, 1919, center; and Dec. 3, 1919)
"He was living alone. A friend, Janos Plesch, once said, “He sleeps until he is awakened; he stays awake until he is told to go to bed; he will go hungry until he is given something to eat; and then he eats until he is stopped.”
In:A Century Ago, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Changed Everything
By DENNIS OVERBYENOV. 24, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/sci...
Awesome, see here:http://www.economist.com/relativity
The theory of relativity is amazing and important, but contrary to what the tagline says, Einstein himself is probably not the best person to have explain it to you. I read this class for Freshman Studies in college, and I honestly have to admit that I wouldn't have gotten much of it without the significant aid of in-depth lectures and classroom discussions. This is not because the ideas themselves are too complex, but because Einstein fails in his attempt to make his ideas understood to a layma
...more
Read on my Kindle, free from Project Gutenberg.
The biggest problem I had with this was actually one of presentation. The team which had prepared it for release had presented all the equations as jpegs, a reasonable idea when reading it in HTML, but not a good one when reading it on a Kindle! Still, who am I kidding - the equations probably wouldn't have made sense to me anyway....
I am an arts graduate trying to understand relativity. I've read Hawking, and I've read Cox, and I thought I should r ...more
The biggest problem I had with this was actually one of presentation. The team which had prepared it for release had presented all the equations as jpegs, a reasonable idea when reading it in HTML, but not a good one when reading it on a Kindle! Still, who am I kidding - the equations probably wouldn't have made sense to me anyway....
I am an arts graduate trying to understand relativity. I've read Hawking, and I've read Cox, and I thought I should r ...more
When I was at university the lecturers recommended books on relativity and I even read a few. I gleaned a vague understanding of the subject. None of them recommended Einstein's book. I can't remember where I found it but I'm very glad I did. It's the best and easiest to understand book about relativity I have ever read. I recommend it to students who are struggling with the concepts and all of them so far have had the "Aha!" moment thanks to Albert himself.
It's just been returned to me from ano ...more
It's just been returned to me from ano ...more
After reading Walter Isaacson's brilliant biography, "Einstein" and finally coming away with an understanding of Einstein's theories, I felt I could make the leap and actually attempt to read something written by the most famous genius of the twentieth century whose theories would transform science and the world.
I chose Einstein's, "Relativity: The Special and General Theory." The book was written by Einstein so that the average person, who was not a physicist or mathematician, but was intereste ...more
I chose Einstein's, "Relativity: The Special and General Theory." The book was written by Einstein so that the average person, who was not a physicist or mathematician, but was intereste ...more
Jul 07, 2015
Þróndr
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
science,
nonfiction
This year is the centennial of the publication of Einstein's general theory of relativity. I got my hands on the Pi Press edition, which was published 10 years ago (coinciding with the centennial of the special theory of relativity.) Yesterday, the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto, sending huge volumes of information back to Earth - and the day before, CERN announced that the LHC has found proof of the existence of the pentaquark. Science continues to reach new frontiers, though nothing t
...more
هذا التقييم ليس لعبقرية آينشتاين بل لكتابه ومهاراته في الكتابة
من المفترض أن هذا الكتاب موجه للعامة ولمن ليس لديهم اطلاع غزير بالرياضيات والفيزياء، ولكن شرحه غير واضح وصعب الفهم. قرأت عن النظرية النسبية في أكثر من كتاب وشاهدت وثائقيات حولها واعتقد أني أفهم مبادءها الأساسية ولكني أردت القراءة عنها من صاحبها نفسه، فوجدت أن غيره كان أفضل منه في تبسيطها وشرحها، فكتابه مليء بالمعادلات والمصطلحات الرياضية.
أثار فضولي أمران في الكتاب، الأول هو استخدام آينشتاين لمصطلح "النجوم الثابتة" بالرغم أن العالم إدم ...more
من المفترض أن هذا الكتاب موجه للعامة ولمن ليس لديهم اطلاع غزير بالرياضيات والفيزياء، ولكن شرحه غير واضح وصعب الفهم. قرأت عن النظرية النسبية في أكثر من كتاب وشاهدت وثائقيات حولها واعتقد أني أفهم مبادءها الأساسية ولكني أردت القراءة عنها من صاحبها نفسه، فوجدت أن غيره كان أفضل منه في تبسيطها وشرحها، فكتابه مليء بالمعادلات والمصطلحات الرياضية.
أثار فضولي أمران في الكتاب، الأول هو استخدام آينشتاين لمصطلح "النجوم الثابتة" بالرغم أن العالم إدم ...more
How dare I give this masterpiece less than 5 stars ?! Although I could hardly claim that I understood 10 percent of the book ! What he was talking about ?! Moving reference bodies, Euclidean geometry, Newtonian theory of gravitation, ..... What ?! We don't see the real length of things as everything is moving in the space ! Length is relative as well as mass ! So what is real ? Is there one single thing that all human can agree on it ?! Relativity can be applied on other aspects of life other th
...more
The best "for dummies" book ever. Written by the master himself, explaining it all with great depth and as simply as possible.
I feel that the General Theory was not covered in any real sense, probably because it would have been too difficult for us. While still appreciating Einstein's visual demonstrations and thought experiments, I wouldn't have minded a few more equations and formulas either, to combine the powers of intuition and precision.
I feel that the General Theory was not covered in any real sense, probably because it would have been too difficult for us. While still appreciating Einstein's visual demonstrations and thought experiments, I wouldn't have minded a few more equations and formulas either, to combine the powers of intuition and precision.
Given Einstein's universally-acknowledged genius and the reputation for intractability still enjoyed by general relativity a century after its birth, this work is a paragon of clarity and simplicity of explication. It is very light on mathematics, only requiring basic algebra, and works almost entirely through illustrative models such as that of an observer on a moving train. Einstein was one of those who had been forced to rethink our universe based on the contradictions raised by the apparent
...more
Albert Einstein was a really smart motherfucker. He was smart not just because he was able to conceive of the theory of relativity (both the special and general theories) - he was working on things that people before him had already worked on. What was really smart about him is that he was able to make it all explicable - if not entirely comprehensible - to your average person.
I'm not going to go into the general and special theories of relativity, because I honestly only understand the theorie ...more
I'm not going to go into the general and special theories of relativity, because I honestly only understand the theorie ...more
While a number of other books cover the topics of special and general relativity, only this one, written by the creator of the theories themselves, conveys a sense of profound understanding that is unparalleled by other books on the subject.
What is most remarkably about this book is that it provides an excellent framework for the special and general theories without necessitating the understanding of advanced math. As someone who loves math, this is not something I would normally laud, but, in ...more
What is most remarkably about this book is that it provides an excellent framework for the special and general theories without necessitating the understanding of advanced math. As someone who loves math, this is not something I would normally laud, but, in ...more
I call it epic book, not only in terms of the knowledge it gives. But it is sure to create a storm of queries and enthusiasm in your mind provided you enjoy mathematics form the core of the heart.
It surely imparts some best lessons for life, that keep your subconscious alert and curiosity should be the prime element of every thought process. The thing that Einstein got the idea of relativity while going home in a car, he saw the time in clock mounted on top of church, and it gave him the storm t ...more
It surely imparts some best lessons for life, that keep your subconscious alert and curiosity should be the prime element of every thought process. The thing that Einstein got the idea of relativity while going home in a car, he saw the time in clock mounted on top of church, and it gave him the storm t ...more
May 16, 2017
A.L. Buehrer
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
the-universe,
non-fiction
This book helped me reach a new milestone: I am no longer afraid to read books with equations in them. At least with this book, I came to realize that the equations were only symbolic translations of what was being said in the text, and once I realized that, they actually made some sense to my arithmephobic mind.
As for how readable and accessible this book is, I’d say, for the typical layperson, it’s moderately difficult. I really think Einstein handled it pretty well, though. He gives it to y ...more
As for how readable and accessible this book is, I’d say, for the typical layperson, it’s moderately difficult. I really think Einstein handled it pretty well, though. He gives it to y ...more
Years ago,in my college physics class,I had to actually learn and try to explain Einstein's theory of relativity. With the complex math and all the workbooks, it was a task I really hated. I thought I understood it and was able to get through the tests. But I never really paid close attention to what it really meant. At that time, all I wanted was to be able to answer queations about it to get grades. Then, I changed my major and went into other subjects that I really cared about. After so many
...more
الكتاب جميل لكنه جعلنى اشعر بالصداع
القراءة عن تفاصيل فيزيائية دون المعادلات والتفاصيل الرياضية لا تجعلنى استطيع التركيز
القراءة عن تفاصيل فيزيائية دون المعادلات والتفاصيل الرياضية لا تجعلنى استطيع التركيز
While I cannot say that I understood this book in its entirety, I can say that it was extremely well written and informative. My failure to grasp the complexity of Einstein's Special and General Theory of Relativity is a result of my inexperience in the field of Physics. I am slowly expanding my knowledge, and while I started off with a basic understanding of Special and General Relativity, this book has been a gem in the pool of information.
I won't try and give a summary of the book itself, an ...more
I won't try and give a summary of the book itself, an ...more
Despite Einstein's best intention to make his theory comprehensible to the non-specialized public, this book is still difficult. The commentary at the end of the book by Robert Geroch is helpful.
In the Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein states that space and time are not fixed properties, that they are intimately connected to each other (hence, spacetime, "ST"), that time and space are shorter and slower as an object moves closer to the speed of light, and that mass increases with the addit ...more
In the Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein states that space and time are not fixed properties, that they are intimately connected to each other (hence, spacetime, "ST"), that time and space are shorter and slower as an object moves closer to the speed of light, and that mass increases with the addit ...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goodreads Librari...: please combine | 2 | 16 | Jul 07, 2018 08:03PM | |
| ProShred Testo | 1 | 3 | Nov 12, 2017 09:03PM | |
| Androforce X10 | 1 | 1 | Oct 13, 2017 04:11AM | |
| Lejuve Cream | 1 | 1 | Oct 04, 2017 09:43PM | |
| NO Force XL | 1 | 2 | Oct 02, 2017 09:44PM | |
| Alpha X Factor | 1 | 1 | Sep 29, 2017 03:06AM | |
| make the maximum | 1 | 4 | Sep 28, 2017 10:40PM |
Goodreads is hiring!
In 1879, Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich by 1909. His 1905 paper explaining the photoelectric effect, the basis of electronics, earned him the Nobel Prize in 1921. His first paper on Special Relativity Theory, also published in 1905, changed the world. After the rise of the Nazi party, Einstein made Princeton his permanent home, becoming
...more
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“E=mc2”
—
80 likes
“Dear Habicht, / Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble... / What are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul...?”
—
21 likes
More quotes…
