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Edwin F. Taylor / John Archibald Wheeler, ?Spacetime Physics?

REVIEW

Special Relativity (SR) is one of those subjects that require much thinking for maturating of ideas. I doubt even if many physicists really understand it. Of the many books written on this subject, Taylor and Wheeler's blink as a jewel. I believe it has many advantages over most of other books. It is extremely slow paced, but not to the point of being tiresome (the reason for this will be explained below). Most texts of SR start with a lenghty "philosophical" or historical discussion, then get to the maths of it, but in such a way that one has the impression that something is not fitting into the whole structure. The reason for this is, I believe, that SR is much needed in modern theoretical and experimental physics, but most of its intricate details can be left over. In other words, physicists need SR as a tool, but do not, as a general rule, need to think over it. Taylor and Wheeler's book is different. They know what is important, get directly to it (and this explains why, although being slow paced, is not tiresome), and fight the nuts and bolts of explaining in the most clear way up to date. You finish with the impression that you understood it. Good pedagogic machinery include questions and answers all over the book (some questions even somewhat silly, but who never thought about any of them before?), so you really feel that the writers are helping you and, most important, that they cared to write an understandable text. The book itself is appealing, appealing as most physics books are not, with a lot of pictures, boxes and quotes interspeded along the text. It is very pleasant reading, has every important information you need for SR as a working physicist (except the covariant formulation of electrodynamics, but this is not important as most of electrodynamical books treat this topic with all needed details, and the presentation of such a topic would find terrible difficulties for the organization of the text) and, most important, you will enjoy it and be able to read every page. One last note on the exercises. I thing nothing can be more educative for understanding SR than exercises like the ones you find there. They are not mathematically difficult, but as a general rule oblige you to think "four-dimensionally". They are the greatest fun of the book, and will make you really understand the meaning of SR. At this point, I must quote "Wheeler's first moral principle": "Do not make a calculation until you know the answer". This is the theme for all those exercises and, indeed, a moral principle that most physicists should follow - think about Feynman!

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