ABSTRACT
Relativity is one of the most important and fascinating elds of study within physics. It’s generally split into two subelds-special relativity and general relativity-both of which were developed by Albert Einstein in the early twentieth century. Relativity accounts for how events are viewed from dierent frames of reference, when those frames of reference are moving with respect to one another or in strong gravitational elds. It also accounts for how light will appear to observers in dierent frames of reference. Many of the eects predicted by the theory of relativity are contrary to the predictions of classical physics and to perceptions based on everyday experience. ese striking and sometimes shocking predictions have been veried repeatedly by experimental evidence. Probably the most famous prediction of special relativity is the equivalence of mass and energy, expressed in the formula E = mc2. is equivalence manifests itself in many ways, particularly in atomic and nuclear physics (Chapter 7) and in the study of fundamental particles (Chapter 8). e implications are far reaching and include the production of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.
