Publisher's Synopsis
This is a comprehensive textbook for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in physics or astrophysics, developing both the formalism and the physical ideas of special and general relativity in a logical and coherent way.;The book consists of two parts. Part one focuses on the special theory and begins with the study of relativistic kinematics from three points of view: the physical (the classic gedanken experiments), the algebraic (the Lorentz transformations), and the graphic (the Minkowski diagrams). Part one concludes with chapters on relativistic dynamics and electrodynamics. Part two begins with a chapter introducing differential geometry to set the mathematical background for general relativity. The physical basis for the theory is begun in the chapter on uniform accelerations.;Subsequent chapters cover rotation, the electromagnetic field, and material media. A second chapter on differential geometry provides the mathematics needed for the final two chapters, which discuss the Einstein field equation and the Schwarzschild solution, and astrophysical and cosmological applications - including a section on the inflationary model.
