Description
Summary:Normally taken by physics majors in their sophomore year. Einstein's postulates; consequences for simultaneity, time dilation, length contraction, clock synchronization; Lorentz transformation; relativistic effects and paradoxes; Minkowski diagrams; invariants and four-vectors; momentum, energy and mass; particle collisions. Relativity and electricity; Coulomb's law; magnetic fields. Brief introduction to Newtonian cosmology. Introduction to some concepts of General Relativity; principle of equivalence. The Schwarzchild metric; gravitational red shift, particle and light trajectories, geodesics, Shapiro delay.