16. Lesson 16:
Special Relativity, 2

Space and Time Rediscovered

  What’s Coming:

How in the world do I write something original about Albert Einstein? We’re going to see how a rebellious young man turned all of science, and a whole century to follow, on its ears. Over and over we’ll see him ask simple questions that turn out to have complex and intricate answers. The Special Theory of Relativity will figure into everything that follows for us, impacting our understanding of space, time, the cosmos, and even quantum mechanics at a deep and mysterious level. It’s not mathematically challenging, but for the first time, it’s so counter to common sense that it’s intellectually and logically challenging. Buckle in. Read closely, and prepare to be surprised, over and over.

We’ll see how the apparent contradictions of last chapter turn out to canonize Maxwell’s theory and require reconstruction of Newton’s! And we’ll see how his two famous postualtes result in truly strange requirements that Nature seems to impose on us. Common sense now leaves the building. Mathematics and how the world actually works takes over.

  Goals of this lesson:

Understanding, Appreciation, and Familiarity

I’d like you to Understand:

• What Einstein’s two “Postulates of Special Relativity” entail

• What “Time Dilation” means and how the Postulates require it to be the case.

I’d like you to Appreciate:

• What “Length Contraction” means and how the Postulates require it to be the case.

• How the very idea of events being “simultaneous” is killed forever.

I’d like you to become Familiar With:

• One critical aspect of Relativity that made everyone accept it: cosmic rays.

• How important it was for Einstein to very deliberately ask simple questions that seem on the surface to be obvious, but which contain deep insight when answers are taken step by “obvious” step.