Relativity Simply Explained

by Martin Gardner

Since the publication of Einstein's "Special Theory of Relativity" in 1905, the discovery of such astronomical phenomena as quasars, pulsars, and black holes -- all intimately connected to relativity -- has provoked a tremendous upsurge of interest in the subject.This volume, a revised version of Martin Gardner's earlier "Relativity for the Million, "brings this fascinating topic up to date. Witty, perceptive, and easily accessible to the general reader, it is one of the clearest and most entertaining introductions to relativity ever written. Mr. Gardner offers lucid explanations of not only the special and general theories of relativity, but of the Michelson-Morley experiment, gravity and spacetime, Mach's principle, the twin paradox, models of the universe, and other topics. A new Postscript, examining the latest developments in the field, and specially written for this edition, is also included. The clarity of the text is especially enhanced by the brilliant graphics of Anthony Ravielli, making this "by far the best layman's account of this difficult subject." -- "Christian Science Monitor. "

Genres: Science, Physics, Nonfiction, Mathematics, Education

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and published over 70 books.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs]

I read this book when my Mom absconded with it from the library she ran, it 1962. I found it fascinatingly foreign in its concepts - but I loved dreaming along with its illustrations!

Martin Gardner tells us in his new preface to it that this book has been in print Longer than the more than the sixty years since I read it. It's that easy to read - everyone understands it but me!

I was a twelve year old dreamer back then. I was also, by today's wide-open standards, jarringly anthropocentric.

And nowadays anthropocentrism is a no-no.

To be anthropocentrist is to find all your meaning in being human. Count me in to that obsolete belief!
***

So a half-aware Aspie, I have never been able to cope with a world where no human values or concepts are fixed.

You can try and prise me free of my retarded humanity, but in the end I always fall back into my comforting miasma.

Some days, when it's close to the solstice and I hafta take an extra neuroleptic or two to stay balanced and healthy, I'm able to see myself as a particle of floating dust. My brain is clear.

But I snap back asleep in my normal world the next morning.

My dad laughs at this. He is a scientist (and a darned fine one)! His POV is Always Logical and Objective.

But me? One excuse is that my prolonged delivery left me in the oven too long and it fried my brain!
***

Honestly I don't know.

But I prefer fixity over relativity any day.

Cause my brain cannot expand itself enough to get around its jarring and conflictive concepts!

For me they are Absolute Over-the-head Zingers.

So, you want fries with that, mister?

(And here you thought I was a graduate English major, hobnobbing with the nabobs.)

[Lost Planet Airman]

Good science from the author of Scientific American's Mathematical Games column.

[Jeremy]

This book gives an interesting view on Einstein's theory of relativity. It explains it for the average person. Things like distance, time, and size are described as relative, not absolute. Think about it. If overnight, while you slept, the universe and everything in it suddenly grew 500 times bigger, you wouldn't notice. All atoms would be bigger, your house would be bigger, the earth would be bigger, everything. You wouldn't notice at all. So things like "big" or "small" don't have any meaning without something to compare it to.
To me, this is pretty cool. I can say that I am being personally enlightened. Everyone's heard of Einstein before, and everyone knows he was a genius. But not many people know all of his theories and their meaning. Here in the 20th and 21st centuries, humankind has made groundbreaking progress. Our society is many times more advanced than it was 100 years ago. People like Einstein help do this.

[Trey Piepmeier]

I remember finding this book at my local library when I was a kid. There was something about the tone of the book and the illustrations that really stuck with me. Sometime in the last couple of years, I started thinking about it again. I managed to find it and put it on my Amazon wish list. Then Livie got it for me as a Christmas gift (in 2013!). I just got finished reading it again.

It's still a delightful book, but I'm surprised how difficult it was to follow, since I remember devouring the book as a kid. Maybe I've gotten dumber over the years.

[Christy]

The first edition of this book, published in 1962, was several pages shorter, because it didn’t have the chapter on quasars, pulsars, and black holes. They were just being discovered. (When I took dumbell physics in 1968, this book was one of our texts, but we had a supplementary book about the newer discoveries.) Anyway, the title of this book is very appropriate. Relativity is explained very simply, and you won’t find anything better, if you’re just starting out.

[Niraj Shah]

This is perhaps the most readable book on relativity theory for humans.

One star up as I have a better understanding of relativity than before. :)

Update: I will make sure I read this book at least once a year.

[Ethan Gelfand]

It does a solid job of going into special and general theory explanations, while keeping the mathematics and technical pieces limited. My complaint is I think he should be more detailed in his explanations. I think the book hits hundreds of holes, but only goes a few inches deep. I'd prefer he lessened the theoretical possibilities of the results of the theories and increasing the details to understand it. Regardless, it's a good book and the illustrations help.

[Rahib Heydarov]

Different approach to the entire world!!!

[Cassie Anne]

Good skim for non science majors who did well in physics and don’t want to be harassed by their physics major friends for being stupid. Easy breezy physics

[Christopher]

This was such ja nice read. The only reason it doesn't get 5 Stars is, that it is (obviously) outdated by now. Overall a lot of ideas are still totally valid and it is so nice to see a viewpoint that is a couple of years old, before I was interested in astronomy.
I highlighted some "mistakes" in the book that are already now replaced with newer theories. Some things just make you smile, like when Pluto put into the groups of planets ... or other ideas besides the Big Bang that I never learnt in school, because when I went to school Big Bang was already the accepted theory. It's just nice to see this "old" view of the universe.

I read the 1996 heavily revised edition.

[Edgar Guedez]

NOT SO EASY TO UNDERSTAND

No mathematics in this book. Relativity is explained by using "thought experiments" not so easy to imagine and understand . Relativity is a genuine ingenious but complicated theory, and it's the best explanation for the way the universe works. The book is outdated now as the big bang theory has been modified and the current thinking is that there was an inflation period, not a bang at the beginning.

[Maksiss]

A great read. The way it explains complex concepts and experiments is truly simple, and with gorgeous illustrations. Made me want to explore a few of these subjects on my own.

If I had to nit-pick, the only downside for me is that the book is already a bit outdated, with so many important cosmological discoveries happening years after it's release. But that's not really fair to say

[Jessada Karnjana]

หลายคนรู้จักชื่อมาร์ติน การ์ดเนอร์ในฐานะนักเขียนโจทย์ นักรวบรวมโจทย์ปัญหาคณิตศาสตร์ ช่วงหนึ่งเคยปล่อยโจทย์ประจำอยู่นิตยสาร Scientific American เล่มนี้แกเขียนอธิบายทฤษฎีที่ยิ่งใหญ่ทฤษฎีหนึ่งของโลก หลายคนรู้จัก แต่น้อยคนเข้าใจ ทฤษฎีสัมพัทธภาพของไอน์สไตน์ ตามชื่อหนังสือ อธิบายง่าย ๆ เหมือนอธิบายให้เด็กฟัง ภาพประกอบสวยดีครับ

[Catty Lissardy]

Clarísimo y súper interesante. La manera en la que introduce a la física moderna y explica la relatividad es increíble, me voló la cabeza.
Realmente no puedo expresar con palabras lo épico que está, no tiene desperdicio alguno.

[Ashley Hiller]

Not an easy read, but an analogy demonstrating that time is relative clicked with me and tbh, my life is now changed.

[Javier]

A very good introduction to relativity, with a lot of simple examples to understand the fundamentals of the theory.

[Leo_Ayasa]

Loved it, read it before my course to prepare, was really helpful

[Camila]

A quick book to get a sense of the relativity theory. The examples are very visually driven.

[Shreethigha]

Beautifully explained. If my science teachers in school had taught like this, I would've never picked arts.

[Philip Stouffer]

ok

[Roberto Rigolin F Lopes]

Bad news. We are too slow and too small to experience relativity. Even the fastest rocket will not help, grow a big belly neither. To see variations on space-time we need to get as fast as light or become as massive as our sun. Good news. Our imagination and mathematics can do these things for us. Of course Gardner uses and abuses of our imagination to explain both special and general relativity in his book. He even point out the assumptions that Newton and Poincaré took for granted but Einstein rejected to create much better explanations for the universe.

[Jim Nielsen]

I enjoyed this book (and its illustrations) but I most especially enjoyed the first half of it. The first half of the book covers the physical principles behind Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. The explanations were insightful and the illustrations were very helpful in communicating the ideas the author was trying to convey. The second half of the book, however, wasn't my favorite. Not because it was written well, but simply because it covered concepts centered around the out-workings of Einstein's theories (black holes, time travel, origin of the universe, etc) that I've already read about plentifully in other books and wasn't really interested in when I picked up this book. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the first half of this book and will likely read it again in the near future when my interest is piqued in relativity theory again because it has such lucid explanations.

[Mohammad Tanviruzzaman]

A lucid read. The new points I found are:
1. Einstein did not abandon all "absolute" concepts, instead, he replaced old absolutes with new ones (space and time are not individually absolute but space-time is, speed of light in vacuum is another new absolute)
2. Minkowski introduced 4-D space-time geometry, which can have 3-D slices representing different viewpoints of different observers.
3. The real apparatus that Michelson-Morley used (for example it floated on Mercury)
4. In Twin Paradox, a problem arises if we think both twins are in relative motion and then why one should age faster than the other, Gardner allocated some space to clear up the issue.

Two questions seem to be outside of relativity (so it should be futile if one tries to find their answers in relativity):
1. Why the speed of light in the vacuum is special?
2. Why does a massive body distort the space-time surrounding it?

[Tom]

Martin Gardner, a former long-time columnist for Scientific American, did the layworld a true favor by taking a concept that made no sense, even coming from the mouth of the illustrious genius who discovered it, and explaining the thing, yes, "simply". Einstein's own dumbed down version of Special and General Relativity written for the public is a siesta-inducing bore, if I remember correctly, but Relativity Simply Explained is so readable it won't take long to get over all the goofy pictures inside.

[Robu-sensei]

In this book, mathematician and science writer Martin Gardner delivers a clear, conceptual overview of both special and general relativity. It is the most in-depth explanation of relativity I have read that has steered clear of heavy-duty mathematics: the most complicated equation presented, of the relationship between relative speed and time dilation, is easily understood by anyone who has mastered basic algebra.

Unfortunately, the illustrations, though they mean well, are of limited use, and many are completely unnecessary.

[Elynn]

A good book to get a basics on relativity. The book is a bit dated and there are areas where there have been significant discoveries that are not covered because of the age, but I found many areas were explained more clearly than other books I've read on relativity. That said there were a few sections I found were a bit confusing so I didn't give it four stars.

[Jeremiah]

If there is a Special & General Theory of Relativity for Dummies, this is it. Perfect for me or anyone who just want the basics, but not so oversimplified that essential nuances are skipped. The best part of all is that it's equation free!!!

[Rachel]

Alright, not the most exciting read but a very good explanation of some fasinating new knowledge that is extremely hard to understand otherwise. Most of the theory sounds freakish science fiction, with theorical time travel and multidimensions. Very interesting.

[David Asher]

"Simply" is a relative term. No pun intended. If you can get past the chapter on gravity, then you are smarter than me. But I do recommend this for the left brainer that want to be in the know.

[Ashish Sontakke]

Special Theory and General theory are easily explained as the title itself says.

Good to read for those who want to know what are these theories all about.