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Special Relativity: A Modern Introduction
Initiates the reader into Einstein's theory of Special Relativity.
255 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2001
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June 5, 2024
This was the first book I read on special relativity when prepping for a class on the topic, because it was the one I happened to have on hand… and I kind of regret that. There are good sides to this book: his extensive discussions of experimental verifications of relativity (including fairly recent ones, not just the classic old experiments with huge error bars) is definitely welcome. And if you want to discuss spacetime diagrams in great detail, Ohanian is your guy.
But I found many sections of this unnecessarily confusing. Maybe I’m less visual than Ohanian, but so many things that would be easy with Lorentz transformations or the spacetime interval are just cumbersome and awkward with spacetime diagrams, in my opinion. (There are definitely things that go the other way too—simultaneity is far better discussed with spacetime diagrams, but it’s not like other treatments ignore this. They just relegate the diagrams to a more minor role.)
Instead of this book, I'd have to recommend Freund's Special Relativity for Beginners if you're interested in detailed derivations and examples from basic special relativity, Susskind & Friedman's Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory if you're looking for a concise overview to get you up to speed on SR before moving into a Lagrangian and field theoretical approach (good basis for leading into QFT), Taylor & Wheeler's Spacetime Physics if you want an insightful presentation of the key elements of SR before giving you a taste of GR, and Carroll's Space, Time, and Motion if you want an insightful and modern overview of SR before going into GR (though without enough detail to really calculate much).
But I found many sections of this unnecessarily confusing. Maybe I’m less visual than Ohanian, but so many things that would be easy with Lorentz transformations or the spacetime interval are just cumbersome and awkward with spacetime diagrams, in my opinion. (There are definitely things that go the other way too—simultaneity is far better discussed with spacetime diagrams, but it’s not like other treatments ignore this. They just relegate the diagrams to a more minor role.)
Instead of this book, I'd have to recommend Freund's Special Relativity for Beginners if you're interested in detailed derivations and examples from basic special relativity, Susskind & Friedman's Special Relativity and Classical Field Theory if you're looking for a concise overview to get you up to speed on SR before moving into a Lagrangian and field theoretical approach (good basis for leading into QFT), Taylor & Wheeler's Spacetime Physics if you want an insightful presentation of the key elements of SR before giving you a taste of GR, and Carroll's Space, Time, and Motion if you want an insightful and modern overview of SR before going into GR (though without enough detail to really calculate much).
Displaying 1 of 1 review