Animated Relativity

What You Are About to See

Relativity theory has for many years been the object of widespread public curiosity. Our interactive, animated version of the earlier small book Relativity in Illustrations (by J. T. Schwartz, currently available in paperback from Dover Publishers, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, NY 11501; [Product Number: 25965-X $7.95]) is intended for everyone who would really like to understand the amazing things this theory has to say. This electronic version, like the earlier book, is suitable for high-schools and colleges, especially those clever young people who, sometime between the age of thirteen and nineteen, wake up, as did Einstein himself, to their calling as scientists.
Animated Relativity explains Einstein's special theory of relativity accurately and carefully, but keeps technicalities to an absolute minimum. Each of its screens combines graphics and text, and many screens include extra animations, which you will see in this web version. In the full version, most screens are introduced by one or two spoken sentences, which emphasize the screen's main point. To save download time, all sound has been left out of this version.
Here are the main points which the full version of Animated Relativity presents:

First it raises the main philosophical question of relativity theory: How do ideas of time and space relate to physical experience?

Then it explains how simple charts can be used to depict the key details of physical experience that entered into Einstein's thinking.

Next it examines the commonsense view of time and space. Using the fact that all careful observers agree in general terms about physical experience — plus the fact that uniformly moving objects cannot be distinguished from stationary objects — it confirms much, but not all, of the commonsense view of time and space.

Since light always moves equally fast in all directions, part of the commonsense view must be rejected. Thus we arrive at Einstein's revolutionary new view of time and space.

Finally, it is seen that the new view demands small, but important changes in some basic laws of physics.

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Last Updated: 11/30/2011 by Diana Schwartz

What You Are About to See

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