Theory of Relativity - Summer 2014

Course Listing

Course Syllabus

Final Project Handout

Back to the Future Handout

Required Books

Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
Richard Feynman, Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry and Space-Time
George Gamow, Mr. Tompkins in paperback

Additional Resources

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences
Murray Gell Mann on beauty in physics
Inertial reference frame: ball's motion on a moving cart
Non-inertial reference frames: The Foucault pendulum in action, plus a useful animation
Mechanical Universe video 41 (Michelson-Morley experiment)
Berlin cloud chamber
Wilson Cloud Chamber and build your own
Gravitational lensing and hands-on lab
Dancing in a time shear (an almost, kinda-Lorentz transformation)
Mechanical Universe video 42 (Lorentz Transformation)
Time travel in Back to the Future II and some thoughts on it here and here (A good starting point for a thoughtful analysis, what do you think?)
Lack of simultaneity
Ladder paradox
Velocity raptor, a relativistic video game with dinosaurs
Visualization of the Godel universe
Brian Green's introduction to general relativity
measuring the "twisting" of space with gravity probe B
Travel towards a blackhole and then finally plunge into one
Spacetime of blackholes, astrophysical blackholes, and caustic echoes
Great resource on blackholes here including what a gravitational wave sounds like and blackhole collisions
Fractal Black Holes on Strings
Interview with John Wheeler on the coining of the term "black hole"
Time dilation in your living room
Traveling through space with an Alcubierre (warp) drive (here and here) and wormholes (???)
Brian Greene's TED talk on string theory
John Conway's Free Will Lectures
Joanne Hewett's Hidden Dimensions and String Theory (includes an excellent introduction to Kaluza-Klein theory).

Homeworks

Quizes

Student Presentations