Special Relativity (M.I.T. Introductory Physics)

This is the best book on special relativity that I have ever come across. It truly teaches the reader where all the ideas from special relativity come from. The author spends incredible time trying to explain difficult ideas in a fashion that is as clear as possible. This maybe makes it lose points from the standpoint of brevity and aesthetics, but French's primary goal here is exactly what it should be: to be as clear as possible about the physical ideas. I definitely strongly recommend this superb book to any student of special relativity.Very little prerequisites are required, just basic calculus (even single variable is sufficient). More than anything the reader needs to be willing to think through the ideas carefully and confidently. At the end of the book, the reader is rewarded by learning how the magnetic field (and corresponding magnetic field laws) has to exist as a natural consequence coulombs law and the principle of special relativity. This ties into advanced ideas on electrodynamics (and can be pursued further in an also excellent book on electrodynamics by Schwartz).I do have a few potential criticisms of this book. The initial chapter on the history of the field is nice, but it definitely delays the reader (who is willing to take on face the experimental finding that the measurment of the speed of light is the same regardless of one's [inertial] state of motion) that is anxious to get on to SR. Another real criticism of this book is that despite its exceptional explanations of the physical insight and motivation behind SR and its key formulas, it does not nicely develop its four-dimensional formulation. This may be out of the scope of this book, but it really is essential for the development of the general theory of relativity (and is important to understand advanced treatments of electrodynamics such as that by Schwartz mentioned above).If you have time (and are also looking for an 'easier' read), it is worth reading Wheeler's spacetime physics after this book. That book gives better insight into the geometric nature of relativity than this book and thus helps the reader build up to GR. However, despite also being a good book, the wheeler book teaches you how to 'do' SR but really fails at logically developing the subject and explaining where the (initially very counter-intuitive) ideas come from. That is where French really excels.

This book is exactly what you think. It's a textbook about special relativity written in 1968 - fortunately exactly nothing of value has changed in the field since then (inb4 angsty relativity specialists disagreeing with me - the math is the math is the math). I highly doubt anyone is buying this for any reason other than for a physics class, but on the off chance that someone is, here's some actual thoughts: it seems to be relatively well written and straightforward (if you can ever say relativity is straightforward). A bit dry, but it is a textbook. My copy is more than a bit faded since, well, it's from 1968, but it's still in good enough shape. I guess I would recommend it if you want to read a special relativity textbook for fun?

I have read several treatments on Special Relativity and like this one as it goes well beyond both the simplistic explanations of time dilation/Lorentz contraction (which can be misleading), and the dry derivation of Lorentz transformations, energy-mass equivalence, etc. There is a good deal of time spent in describing experiments and empirical results both in support of the predictions of the theory and as a backdrop to the history leading up to and succeeding its publication. The book covers numerous adjacent topics such as relativistic Doppler effect and particle dynamics and looks back and forth between the various implications of the theory together with the standard analytical framework to build a more complete understanding than I've seen in other books. It is not the fastest exposure to the concepts or primer of the relevant mathematics, but should build a more complete understanding for those willing to take the time.

I think this is an excellent book to introduce special relativity. For a lot of books, if I could finish reading half of the book, I consider the book excellent. This is one of the books I actually finished reading the entire book. As a matter of fact, the last chapter is the most interesting. It really brings electrical field and magnetic field together, and this is the very purpose of me looking into special relativity. If the book could extend a bit more in four-vectors, that would be great. Nonetheless, this is still an excellent book. This makes me wonder if I should buy other books by French.

Bought this for a gift for my son and he has read it three times already. Simply Loves A.P. French as a mentor and author.

Lots of materials in this book. It is not very good in explaining the basics of theory but it does explain many physical phenomenon using the theory.

Amazing book. author is clear and concise. Received on time.

This is a wonderful book, I really enjoyed it and I recommend all of A.P French's books. Very clear writing, no confusion, it's a joy to read.

Very good book for a non physicist like myself, trying to get to grips with Relativity, a dim glow is getting brighter in my understanding. I can recommend any book by this author

Good book

One of the best SR books available.

Again black and white copy with high rate,Don't buy foreign writer book online,

Very good book. Experimental backing for theory presented in the book is nice feature of this book.