Contents › Part 4

Part 4 — Special Relativity

1. Experiments: Light, the Aether, and Time experiment
   • Foundations
   • The finite speed of light
   • Michelson and Morley: the search for the aether wind (1887)
   • Fizeau: light dragged by moving water (1851)
   • Cavity resonators: the modern Michelson–Morley (1979–2015)
   • The muon lifetime
   • What the experiments establish
2. Lorentz Transformations
   • The postulates
   • Lorentz boosts
   • Spacetime diagrams
   • Consequences of the postulates
   • Composition of velocities
   • General Lorentz transformations
3. Minkowski Space and Its Symmetries
   • Conserved quantities
   • The Lorentz group
   • The Poincaré group
4. Relativistic Dynamics
   • Four-vectors
   • Four-momentum and mass–energy
   • The relativistic force law
   • Massless particles
   • Collisions
   • The twin paradox
   • Covariant electrodynamics in one line
5. Experiment: Time Dilation and Relativistic Kinematics experiment
   • Ives and Stilwell: the moving atomic clock (1938)
   • Rossi and Hall: muon survival with altitude (1941)
   • Frisch and Smith: Mount Washington to sea level (1963)
   • The CERN muon storage ring (1977)
   • Hafele and Keating: caesium clocks flown around the world (1972)
   • Bertozzi: the speed limit (1964)
   • Summary of the evidence