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English: This file is the special relativity lecture of the Wikiversity:Special relativity and steps towards general relativity course. It is in pdf format for convenient viewing as a fullscreen, structured presentation in a classroom.
In physics, the special theory of relativity, or special relativity for short, is a scientific theory of the relationship between space and time. In Albert Einstein 's 1905 paper, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies , the theory is presented as being based on just two postulates : [ p 1 ] [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
A previously popular description of special relativity's predictions, in which an observer sees a passing object to be contracted (for instance, from a sphere to a flattened ellipsoid), was wrong. A sphere maintains its circular outline since, as the sphere moves, light from further points of the Lorentz-contracted ellipsoid takes longer to ...
:English translations: "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?". Translation by George Barker Jeffery and Wilfrid Perrett in The Principle of Relativity, London: Methuen and Company, Ltd. (1923). :Used the newly formulated theory of special relativity to introduce the mass energy formula. One of the Annus Mirabilis papers.
Special relativity is a theory of the structure of spacetime. It was introduced in Einstein's 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" (for the contributions of many other physicists and mathematicians, see History of special relativity). Special relativity is based on two postulates which are contradictory in classical mechanics:
The following notations are used very often in special relativity: Lorentz factor = where = and v is the relative velocity between two inertial frames.. For two frames at rest, γ = 1, and increases with relative velocity between the two inertial frames.
1. First postulate (principle of relativity) The laws of physics take the same form in all inertial frames of reference.. 2. Second postulate (invariance of c) . As measured in any inertial frame of reference, light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c that is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body.
There is Robertson's test theory (1949) which predicts different experimental results from Einstein's special relativity, and there is the Mansouri–Sexl theory (1977) which is equivalent to Robertson's theory. There is also Edward's theory (1963) which cannot be called a test theory because it is physically equivalent to special relativity. [16]