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    Relativity - The Special and General Theory
    Relativity - The Special and General Theory
    Relativity - The Special and General Theory
    Ebook159 pages1 hour

    Relativity - The Special and General Theory

    By Albert Einstein

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    Originally published in 1916. PREFACE: The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. The work presumes a standard of education corresponding to that of a university matriculation examination, and, despite the shortness of the book, a fair amount of patience and force of will on the part of the reader....Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateDec 1, 2011
    ISBN9781447493587
    Author

    Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein was a German mathematician and physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. His work also had a major impact on the development of atomic energy. In his later years, Einstein focused on unified field theory.

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    Reviews for Relativity - The Special and General Theory

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    • 5/5
      For me, the best part was the paradoxes. Einstein uses lot of paradoxes to explain his ideas, and they are strikingly amazing!
      Translator did a good job in making it readable for people who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics.
      A must read I'd say.
    • 3/5
      This book is subtitled "A clear exlanation that anyone can understand". Unfortunately, I found that to be untrue, although I must admit I have no science training at all. For me, though, this book made a nice companion piece to the biography on Einstein I'm reading, and the Einstein for Dummies book (which does provide a clear explanation that anyone can understand). It was nice to read Dr. Einstein's own words.
    • 3/5
      Let’s face it. If you think you want to read this, then you may as well go ahead and dive in. The surprise…it is relatively easy to read. (Last time for that word, honest) I have slogged through a number of books trying to get a grasp of the concepts within Einstein’s theories. Every time I feel like I make some headway, but it feels like some of it is always out of my grasp. With the promise that Einstein himself was the best to explain it, I dove in. The good news is that he does try to take it down to our level. The bad news is he uses some math in doing so. Accordingly, at the end of it all, I have made more headway, but I still can’t get my head around gravity being just a bend in space. (Or maybe, that isn’t what it is, and that shows the ignorance I’ve still got to overcome.) Bottom line, you really can’t beat the primary source. Maybe if I read it one more time….
    • 5/5
      Very easy to understand.
    • 3/5
      Diminished my presumption of my own supreme intelligence. Completely inaccessible somewhere around chapter 9 but then again I probably wasn't his intended audience. I have zero scientific training. Loved how he used phrases such as "the observer will immediately notice..." or "the reader will obviously infer from the following...". I found very little either immediate or obvious.
    • 2/5
      I abandoned this to re-read Hawking after an uninspiring start. I think relativity is most interesting with a little more time and cosmology under out collective belt.
    • 3/5
      The rating doesn't reflect the importance or quality of thinking of this book. It's relative... and subjective. It reflects rather how much I understood and enjoyed it, and at that is overated, although I gave it as high as I did because I'm glad I tried and might come back to it. In Einstein's preface to the 1916 book he said he wrote it for the general educated reader--college graduates--even though it would require "a fair amount of patience and force of will on the part of the reader." The front cover of my edition calls it "a clear explanation that anyone can understand." I am a college graduate (and beyond). I don't think I'm stupid. And the equations that are in the book (and the book is littered with them) don't even require college mathematics. We're not talking calculus here--just algebraic equations. So, did I understand the entire book given "patience" and "force of will." No. Maybe I didn't have enough of both. It's a very short book, only 157 pages--but by God, it's not an easy one. Did I understand most of it? No. Some of it. Well, yes. But I suspect my American education in universities in the 1990s isn't the equivalent of German college graduates in 1916. It's not the mathematics--it's the physics. In my American high school biology and chemistry was required. Physics wasn't even offered. To graduate college I had to take some science courses--but the requirement could be fulfilled by "soft" sciences such as biology and anthropology. I have a friend that protests that there's a difference between "verbal" and "mathematical" gifts and people like us shouldn't be forced to take those hard, meanie sciences. I'm not convinced that on the contrary we haven't been short changed. I'd love to know if someone who took at least one course on physics had a different experience with this book.So, did I learn anything by tackling this? I was able to squeeze out some knowledge after banging my head repeatedly on my desk reading (and rereading) such chapters as "The Principle of Relativity." Einstein does try to illustrate some of the ideas by using everyday examples such as a moving train on an embankment, pans on a stove and a man tethered to a chest. I learned:1) Special relativity deals with electromagnetic forces; General Relativity deals with gravity.2) Given the speed of light is a constant, the addition of velocities of moving objects according to classical mechanics fails because it would indicate that the speed of light would be diminished by the velocity of an object. (I think.)3) Space and time are not absolute in position but relative to the observer; they are not independent of each other but influenced by the distribution of matter (gravity).4) The theory of general relativity unites the principles of the conservation of mass and of energy.5) Since college my brain has turned to mush. Maybe I should try to get through a physics textbook? Probably not... (See above on lack of patience and force of will.)I got this book because Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity was on a list of 100 Significant books. I've since learned that what I bought (and am reviewing here) isn't the same book. Relativity was originally published in German in 1916. The Meaning of Relativity was based on a series of lectures given at Princeton University in 1921. I'm not sanguine I'd do any better with that book given a review quoted from Physics Today says it's "intended for one who has already gone through a standard text and digested the mechanics of tensor theory and the physical basis of relativity." Bottom line, unless you're willing to do some homework to ground yourself in physics you're better off reading more...well dumbed down books by the likes of Asimov, Sagan or Hawking. Incidentally I also recently read Darwin's Origin of Species. That book I found easy to comprehend. Oh well.
    • 3/5
      No. Without a decent math and physics background, you will not understand this. It does help to grasp one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century. This attempt fails to easily impart a good understanding of the theory, but it does give someone the sense of the enormity of the discovery itself.
    • 5/5
      Came for the technical exposition, stayed for the unexpected simplicity, and then Appendix V dropped a bomb on everything. Great, quick read.
    • 4/5
      Not what they'd call "popular" today, but it's written at exactly the level that if I squint and focus my brain real hard, I can follow the arguments despite not having done a real math or physics (intro astro or Fractals for Nonmajors don't count) class since high school.A few of the suspicions and conclusions are a wee bit corrected since the time (quantum happened, Unified Field Theory didn't so far), but this book is really good at giving you a deeper look at the _why_ of relativity, the parts that always get glossed over or oversimplified ("oh yeah, space is curved") for people who can't do the math on their own. His sentences on this stuff aren't luminously obvious, but he never pulls his punches either.
    • 5/5
      This was one of the first opportunities for Americans to read about relativity.

    Book preview

    Relativity - The Special and General Theory - Albert Einstein

    RELATIVITY

    THE SPECIAL AND GENERAL THEORY

    BY

    ALBERT EINSTEIN, Ph.D.

    PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN

    TRANSLATED BY

    ROBERT W. LAWSON, M.Sc.

    UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

    RELATIVITY

    THE SPECIAL AND GENERAL THEORY

    PREFACE

    THE present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus¹ of theoretical physics. The work presumes a standard of education corresponding to that of a university matriculation examination, and, despite the shortness of the book, a fair amount of patience and force of will on the part of the reader. The author has spared himself no pains in his endeavour to present the main ideas in the simplest and most intelligible form, and on the whole, in the sequence and connection in which they actually originated. In the interest of clearness, it appeared to me inevitable that I should repeat myself frequently, without paying the slightest attention to the elegance of the presentation. I adhered scrupulously to the precept of that brilliant theoretical physicist, L. Boltzmann, according to whom matters of elegance ought to be left to the tailor and to the cobbler. I make no pretence of having withheld from the reader difficulties which are inherent to the subject. On the other hand, I have purposely treated the empirical physical foundations of the theory in a step-motherly fashion, so that readers unfamiliar with physics may not feel like the wanderer who was unable to see the forest for trees. May the book bring some one a few happy hours of suggestive thought!

    A. EINSTEIN

    December, 1916

    ¹ The mathematical fundaments of the special theory of relativity are to be found in the original papers of H. A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, H. Minkowski‘ published under the title Das Relativitäts prinsip (The Principle of Relativity) in B. G. Teubner’s collection of monographs Fortsckritte der mathematischen Wissenschaften (Advances in the Mathematical Sciences), also in M. Laue’s exhaustive book Das Relativitäts prinsip—published by Friedr. Vieweg & Son, Braunschweig. The general theory of relativity, together with the necessary parts of the theory of invariants, is dealt with in the author’s book Die Grundlagen der allgemeinen Relativitätstheoris (The Foundations of the General Theory of Relativity)—Joh. Ambr. Barth, 1916; this book assumes some familiarity with the special theory of relativity.

    NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION

    IN the present year (1918) an excellent and detailed manual on the general theory of relativity, written by H. Weyl, was published by the firm Julius Springer (Berlin). This book, entitled Raum—Zeit—Materie (Space—Time—Matter), may be warmly recommended to mathematicians and physicists.

    BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

    ALBERT EINSTEIN is the son of German-Jewish parents. He was born in 1879 in the town of Ulm, Würtemberg, Germany. His schooldays were spent in Munich, where he attended the Gymnasium until his sixteenth year. After leaving school at Munich, he accompanied his parents to Milan, whence he proceeded to Switzerland six months later to continue his studies.

    From 1896 to 1900 Albert Einstein studied mathematics and physics at the Technical High School in Zurich, as he intended becoming a secondary school (Gymnasium) teacher. For some time afterwards he was a private tutor, and having meanwhile become naturalised, he obtained a post as engineer in the Swiss Patent Office in 1902, which position he occupied till 1909. The main ideas involved in the most important of Einstein’s theories date back to this period. Amongst these may be mentioned: The Special Theory of Relativity, Inertia of Energy, Theory of the Brownian Movement, and the Quantum-Law of the Emission and Absorption of Light (1905). These were followed some years later by the Theory of the Specific Heat of Solid Bodies, and the fundamental idea of the General Theory of Relativity.

    During the interval 1909 to 1911 he occupied the post of Professor Extraordinarius at the University of Zurich, afterwards being appointed to the University of Prague, Bohemia, where he remained as Professor Ordinarius until 1912. In the latter year Professor Einstein accepted a similar chair at the Polytechnikum, Zurich, and continued his activities there until 1914, when he received a call to the Prussian Academy of Science, Berlin, as successor to Van’t Hoff. Professor Einstein is able to devote himself freely to his studies at the Berlin Academy, and it was here that he succeeded in completing his work on the General Theory of Relativity (1915–17). Professor Einstein also lectures on various special branches of physics at the University of Berlin, and, in addition, he is Director of the Institute for Physical Research of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft.

    Professor Einstein has been twice married. His first wife, whom he married at Berne in 1903, was a fellow-student from Serbia. There were two sons of this marriage, both of whom are living in Zurich, the elder being sixteen years of age. Recently Professor Einstein married a widowed cousin, with whom he is now living in Berlin.

    R. W. L.

    TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

    IN presenting this translation to the English-reading public, it is hardly necessary for me to enlarge on the Author’s prefatory remarks, except to draw attention to those additions to the book which do not appear in the original.

    At my request, Professor Einstein kindly supplied me with a portrait of himself, by one of Germany’s most celebrated artists. Appendix III, on The Experimental Confirmation of the General Theory of Relativity, has been written specially for this translation. Apart from these valuable additions to the book, I have included a biographical note on the Author, and, at the end of the book, an Index and a list of English references to the subject. This list, which is more suggestive than exhaustive, is intended as a guide to those readers who wish to pursue the subject farther.

    I desire to tender my best thanks to my colleagues Professor S. R. Milner, D.Sc., and Mr. W. E. Curtis, A.R.C.Sc., F.R.A.S., also to my friend Dr. Arthur Holmes, A.R.C.Sc., F.G.S., of the Imperial College, for their kindness in reading through the manuscript, for helpful criticism, and for numerous suggestions. I owe an expression of thanks also to Messrs. Methuen for their ready counsel and advice, and for the care they have bestowed on the work during the course of its publication.

    ROBERT W. LAWSON

    THE PHYSICS LABORATORY

    THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

    June 12, 1920

    CONTENTS

    PART I

    THE SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY

    PART II

    THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY

    PART III

    CONSIDERATIONS ON THE UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE

    APPENDICES

    BIBLIOGRAPHY

    INDEX

    RELATIVITY

    PART I

    THE SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY

    I

    PHYSICAL MEANING OF GEOMETRICAL PROPOSITIONS

    IN your schooldays most of you who read this book made acquaintance with the noble building of Euclid’s geometry, and you remember—perhaps with more respect than love—the magnificent structure, on the lofty staircase of which you were chased about for uncounted hours by conscientious teachers. By reason of your past experience, you would certainly regard every one with disdain who should pronounce even the most out-of-the-way proposition of this science to be untrue. But perhaps this feeling of proud certainty would leave you immediately if some one were to ask you: What, then, do you mean by the assertion that these propositions are true? Let us proceed to give this question a little consideration.

    Geometry sets out from certain conceptions such as plane, point, and straight line, with which we

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