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Relativity Visualized: The Gold Nugget of Relativity Books
Perfect for those interested in physics but who are not physicists or mathematicians, this book makes relativity so simple that a child can understand it. By replacing equations with diagrams, the book allows non-specialist readers to fully understand the concepts in relativity without the slow, painful progress so often associated with a complicated scientific subject. It allows readers not only to know how relativity works, but also to intuitively understand it.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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February 5, 2017
This book is a really fun explanation of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The tone is quite whimsical and there are delightful and helpful illustrations on every page. Having your brain warped was never so much fun!
One of the things from this book that has stuck with me over the years (I originally read this book in 1997), and which has served as valuable illumination in other areas of study, including literature and theology, is the idea that even science cannot function apart from myth. (The author devotes one chapter to this very topic and it is quite revelatory.)
Update, January 2017:
Been thinking about this again recently and the topic has come up in conversation with some of my older children. Here is an extended quote from Chapter 5: “The Myth,” referenced above:
“There is afoot an erroneous idea. It is that in physics the ultimate reality is a mathematical prescription, an equation. In fact, the ultimate reality is a little story or myth. . . . The invention of such a myth is not at all against the spirit of science – which has the job, first of all, of enabling the inquiring mind to feel at home in a mysterious universe. . . . Most areas of physics, which are thoroughly understood and regularly worked, are thought about, even by expert physicists, in terms of various good myths. For example the force between static electric charges is thought about in terms of a sex myth: opposites attract, likes repel. Inertia is thought of as a natural, almost humanlike, lethargy of matter. Conservation laws and the Principles of Least Time or Least Action are cast as economics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is thought of as the natural tendency of things to get messed up, Murphy’s Law. . . . One of the first and strongest objections to Newton’s Theory of Gravitation was that it endowed inert matter with an animal characteristic: to be affected by and attracted to other distant matter through empty space without any physical connection, to flock together! The concept of inborn empathy, acting at a distance, seemed to be a regression to the mystic potencies, sympathies, and tendencies for which the medieval science was ridiculed by Galileo. Newton did not like his own myth – but it worked.”
One of the things from this book that has stuck with me over the years (I originally read this book in 1997), and which has served as valuable illumination in other areas of study, including literature and theology, is the idea that even science cannot function apart from myth. (The author devotes one chapter to this very topic and it is quite revelatory.)
Update, January 2017:
Been thinking about this again recently and the topic has come up in conversation with some of my older children. Here is an extended quote from Chapter 5: “The Myth,” referenced above:
“There is afoot an erroneous idea. It is that in physics the ultimate reality is a mathematical prescription, an equation. In fact, the ultimate reality is a little story or myth. . . . The invention of such a myth is not at all against the spirit of science – which has the job, first of all, of enabling the inquiring mind to feel at home in a mysterious universe. . . . Most areas of physics, which are thoroughly understood and regularly worked, are thought about, even by expert physicists, in terms of various good myths. For example the force between static electric charges is thought about in terms of a sex myth: opposites attract, likes repel. Inertia is thought of as a natural, almost humanlike, lethargy of matter. Conservation laws and the Principles of Least Time or Least Action are cast as economics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is thought of as the natural tendency of things to get messed up, Murphy’s Law. . . . One of the first and strongest objections to Newton’s Theory of Gravitation was that it endowed inert matter with an animal characteristic: to be affected by and attracted to other distant matter through empty space without any physical connection, to flock together! The concept of inborn empathy, acting at a distance, seemed to be a regression to the mystic potencies, sympathies, and tendencies for which the medieval science was ridiculed by Galileo. Newton did not like his own myth – but it worked.”
January 3, 2024
There Is Only One Speed in Spacetime: A review of Relativity Visualized by Lewis Carroll Epstein
1981, Insight Press, San Francisco, CA, 227 pages
Although everyone knows about relativity theory, very few understand its far-reaching implications. No book on relativity is as good as this one for explaining those implications – “The gold nugget of relativity books” according to author John Gribben. In just over 200 pages of spell-binding examples and descriptions, teacher Lewis Carroll Epstein lays before us the truths of relativity theory in both its special and general forms, without complex mathematics or difficult scientific concepts, and in often humorous and witty ways. Profusely illustrated, loaded with examples, with many useful questions-answers, all written in easy-to-read double columns per page, Epstein’s book exposes our everyday assumptions about time, space, matter, and energy, and drives home the larger, stranger truths of the Einsteinian universe. Although I’ve read about these things numerous times before, Epstein’s book finally cemented them into my brain in a way that now has me both thinking and seeing differently. It helps that I study and practice amateur astronomy so I’m familiar with cosmic events, objects, sizes, distances, etc. But the book is written for anyone with a basic science background, an open mind, and abiding curiosity. Because this book has so deftly explained things I only partly knew and thereby transformed my understanding of nature, space and time, it is going onto my All-Time Favorites shelf. And it’s taken me eight years of multiple readings to absorb the insights here enough to feel comfortable writing this review.
Everything relativistic you’ve heard of is here: relative motion, spacetime, speed of light, shrinking of space, slowing of time, discarded ideas from the past, energy, mass, warping of spacetime, and of course, the Big Bang. As the author explains in a note at the top of the Table of Contents, “Chapter 5 is the centerpiece of this work. The chapters preceding it relate to its development and those following it relate to its application of its perspective.” For fear of spoiling the author’s primary idea, I’ll only note that the title of Chapter 5 is “The Myth,” and, although simple, adopting it has enormous consequences. For hard-core mathematics and science types, Chapter 5 could be a deal breaker, but for the rest of us who understand that life is more than science and math (as important as they are), who are ready to let go of their Privileged God’s Eye View Project, Chapter 5 will prove a very satisfying solution to the confusing results of Einsteinian relativity.
I’ll admit that there’s still plenty in this book that I’ve yet to fully grasp, descriptions and examples of time, space, and mass distortions of one sort or another. Changing our default inbred assumptions on the nature of space and time is not easy. One has to spend time and mental energy thinking through his examples, visualizing, imagining, and applying your best Gedanken skills. Everyday spatial and temporal terms are so deeply ingrained in our thinking and experience that it’s difficult to digest such completely unintuitive results. After enough effort and time with Epstein’s book, you’ll begin to see 4-dimensional spacetime as a single thing – not time in this way and space that way, but spacetime, a single unified medium that is shaped by mass and energy. The implications are astounding even though they rarely show up in everyday experience.
One of these amazing spacetime facts which related to the Myth of Chapter 5 is summarized by Epstein on page 81:
If time is integral to space, you’re traveling through time whether you’re sitting still or flying to New York on an airliner. However, the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. They’re proportional to each other – more of one, less of the other – with the limit being, of course, the speed of light. Epstein employs a simple diagram to show this relationship of time-to-space with the speed of light limit. With the many examples he gives, your head will be swimming before you finish the chapter.
Part of the reason relativity concepts are so difficult to wrap our minds around is because they hinge on an aspect of nature that is far beyond normal human experience: the speed of light. Our shared “common sense,” growing out of our natural perceptual abilities at human scales, is what allows us to make determinations of what is and isn’t right, wrong, real, true, or normal. This all changes with lightspeed, when we consider velocities approaching the speed of light, something we can only do in our imaginations. Outside our normal human experience in a similar way are the vast expanses of spacetime, interstellar and intergalactic distances, in which the speed of light seems like a slow train, crossing the vast distances between things. To get an idea of just how “slow” lightspeed is in relation to cosmic distances, check out the realistic YT simulation video “Riding Light - Traversing the Solar System at the speed of light.” Spoiler alert: it’s not very exciting (unless you enjoy the music of Steve Reich).
It's important to remember that relativistic time as discussed in this book is only one aspect of time. The other, much more familiar aspect of time is thermodynamic time. While the former is symmetrical-reversible and applies mostly to large scale objects that are affected by gravity, the latter is asymmetrical or irreversible, as in “the arrow of time” and is our common experience of temporal directionality. Epstein does not discuss irreversible time since relativistic physics has almost nothing to do with it. There are many other books which discuss the origin of thermodynamic irreversible time such as the classic by Prigogine and Stengers Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature, Schneider and Sagan’s Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life, and Chaisson’s Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature, all three having to do with the role of time in the evolution of life and the cosmos. Beware too that within contemporary physics, there are those (mainly physicists who see their field as the basis of all science) who work to debunk, discredit, or play down the idea of entropic irreversible time and our experience-perception of temporal growth and decay, who feel their task is to promote a single view of time as valid. I highlight this issue in my GR review of Rovelli’s The Order of Time.
I digress. Be sure to pick up a copy of this book if you have any interest and curiosity about relativistic physics, particularly if you’re into astronomy and space science. Relativity Visualized is a mindbogglingly delightful resource on the nature of our relativistic universe. It’s something you’ll want to return to again and again in order to allow the truths of relativistic spacetime sink into your awareness. And at some point you’ll realize why there’s only one speed in spacetime.
1981, Insight Press, San Francisco, CA, 227 pages
Although everyone knows about relativity theory, very few understand its far-reaching implications. No book on relativity is as good as this one for explaining those implications – “The gold nugget of relativity books” according to author John Gribben. In just over 200 pages of spell-binding examples and descriptions, teacher Lewis Carroll Epstein lays before us the truths of relativity theory in both its special and general forms, without complex mathematics or difficult scientific concepts, and in often humorous and witty ways. Profusely illustrated, loaded with examples, with many useful questions-answers, all written in easy-to-read double columns per page, Epstein’s book exposes our everyday assumptions about time, space, matter, and energy, and drives home the larger, stranger truths of the Einsteinian universe. Although I’ve read about these things numerous times before, Epstein’s book finally cemented them into my brain in a way that now has me both thinking and seeing differently. It helps that I study and practice amateur astronomy so I’m familiar with cosmic events, objects, sizes, distances, etc. But the book is written for anyone with a basic science background, an open mind, and abiding curiosity. Because this book has so deftly explained things I only partly knew and thereby transformed my understanding of nature, space and time, it is going onto my All-Time Favorites shelf. And it’s taken me eight years of multiple readings to absorb the insights here enough to feel comfortable writing this review.
Everything relativistic you’ve heard of is here: relative motion, spacetime, speed of light, shrinking of space, slowing of time, discarded ideas from the past, energy, mass, warping of spacetime, and of course, the Big Bang. As the author explains in a note at the top of the Table of Contents, “Chapter 5 is the centerpiece of this work. The chapters preceding it relate to its development and those following it relate to its application of its perspective.” For fear of spoiling the author’s primary idea, I’ll only note that the title of Chapter 5 is “The Myth,” and, although simple, adopting it has enormous consequences. For hard-core mathematics and science types, Chapter 5 could be a deal breaker, but for the rest of us who understand that life is more than science and math (as important as they are), who are ready to let go of their Privileged God’s Eye View Project, Chapter 5 will prove a very satisfying solution to the confusing results of Einsteinian relativity.
I’ll admit that there’s still plenty in this book that I’ve yet to fully grasp, descriptions and examples of time, space, and mass distortions of one sort or another. Changing our default inbred assumptions on the nature of space and time is not easy. One has to spend time and mental energy thinking through his examples, visualizing, imagining, and applying your best Gedanken skills. Everyday spatial and temporal terms are so deeply ingrained in our thinking and experience that it’s difficult to digest such completely unintuitive results. After enough effort and time with Epstein’s book, you’ll begin to see 4-dimensional spacetime as a single thing – not time in this way and space that way, but spacetime, a single unified medium that is shaped by mass and energy. The implications are astounding even though they rarely show up in everyday experience.
One of these amazing spacetime facts which related to the Myth of Chapter 5 is summarized by Epstein on page 81:
The thing is this: You are always traveling. And you are always doing so with a constant speed. Even when you stand still. When you stand still you are traveling through time...
If time is integral to space, you’re traveling through time whether you’re sitting still or flying to New York on an airliner. However, the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. They’re proportional to each other – more of one, less of the other – with the limit being, of course, the speed of light. Epstein employs a simple diagram to show this relationship of time-to-space with the speed of light limit. With the many examples he gives, your head will be swimming before you finish the chapter.
Part of the reason relativity concepts are so difficult to wrap our minds around is because they hinge on an aspect of nature that is far beyond normal human experience: the speed of light. Our shared “common sense,” growing out of our natural perceptual abilities at human scales, is what allows us to make determinations of what is and isn’t right, wrong, real, true, or normal. This all changes with lightspeed, when we consider velocities approaching the speed of light, something we can only do in our imaginations. Outside our normal human experience in a similar way are the vast expanses of spacetime, interstellar and intergalactic distances, in which the speed of light seems like a slow train, crossing the vast distances between things. To get an idea of just how “slow” lightspeed is in relation to cosmic distances, check out the realistic YT simulation video “Riding Light - Traversing the Solar System at the speed of light.” Spoiler alert: it’s not very exciting (unless you enjoy the music of Steve Reich).
It's important to remember that relativistic time as discussed in this book is only one aspect of time. The other, much more familiar aspect of time is thermodynamic time. While the former is symmetrical-reversible and applies mostly to large scale objects that are affected by gravity, the latter is asymmetrical or irreversible, as in “the arrow of time” and is our common experience of temporal directionality. Epstein does not discuss irreversible time since relativistic physics has almost nothing to do with it. There are many other books which discuss the origin of thermodynamic irreversible time such as the classic by Prigogine and Stengers Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature, Schneider and Sagan’s Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life, and Chaisson’s Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature, all three having to do with the role of time in the evolution of life and the cosmos. Beware too that within contemporary physics, there are those (mainly physicists who see their field as the basis of all science) who work to debunk, discredit, or play down the idea of entropic irreversible time and our experience-perception of temporal growth and decay, who feel their task is to promote a single view of time as valid. I highlight this issue in my GR review of Rovelli’s The Order of Time.
I digress. Be sure to pick up a copy of this book if you have any interest and curiosity about relativistic physics, particularly if you’re into astronomy and space science. Relativity Visualized is a mindbogglingly delightful resource on the nature of our relativistic universe. It’s something you’ll want to return to again and again in order to allow the truths of relativistic spacetime sink into your awareness. And at some point you’ll realize why there’s only one speed in spacetime.
October 18, 2011
This is excellent physics discussion without many equations.
An interesting quote from it too:
"Physics is actually a religion. A religion is
based upon articles (axioms) of unproved faith. In
physics these unproved articles are:
1. There always has to be a reason.
2. The body of reasons is fully self-consistent.
But even if past experience had been in full
accord with these articles, this does not, in itself,
assure continued compliance.The facts are that past
experience has not confirmed the two articles. At
any time, past or present, there have always
been things for which reasons have not been
invented. And internal contradictions have always
been there, haunting us. Thus, belief in these two major articles at the very basics of physics is, in reality, unproved faith."
An interesting quote from it too:
"Physics is actually a religion. A religion is
based upon articles (axioms) of unproved faith. In
physics these unproved articles are:
1. There always has to be a reason.
2. The body of reasons is fully self-consistent.
But even if past experience had been in full
accord with these articles, this does not, in itself,
assure continued compliance.The facts are that past
experience has not confirmed the two articles. At
any time, past or present, there have always
been things for which reasons have not been
invented. And internal contradictions have always
been there, haunting us. Thus, belief in these two major articles at the very basics of physics is, in reality, unproved faith."
October 17, 2007
It, like, takes the most difficult concepts ever thought and makes nice little easily-understood cartoons out of them. And it succeeds. Awesome little book.
October 4, 2018
I really loved this book, although I did have a few criticisms of it. I thought about giving four stars but even with my small nitpicks I really do think it deserved five.
I can't claim that finishing this book made me understand relativity completely, but it helped me get a much more full understanding than I had before. Many of Epstein's drawings make the concepts very obvious and easy to understand. I had so many "ah-ha" moments while reading when his drawings would make something click and it seemed almost obvious.
That said, there were also plenty of parts that went right over my head. In some cases, Epstein's drawings and explanations were either not thorough enough, not clear enough, or assumed the reader already had very deep understanding of some topics.
My biggest complaint with this book is actually how it's arranged. More times than not, it seems like the drawing that he refers to is on a different page than his explanation, requiring flipping back and forth and trying to remember details as you flip.
Overall, I would still highly recommend this book for anyone trying to understand relativity better.
I can't claim that finishing this book made me understand relativity completely, but it helped me get a much more full understanding than I had before. Many of Epstein's drawings make the concepts very obvious and easy to understand. I had so many "ah-ha" moments while reading when his drawings would make something click and it seemed almost obvious.
That said, there were also plenty of parts that went right over my head. In some cases, Epstein's drawings and explanations were either not thorough enough, not clear enough, or assumed the reader already had very deep understanding of some topics.
My biggest complaint with this book is actually how it's arranged. More times than not, it seems like the drawing that he refers to is on a different page than his explanation, requiring flipping back and forth and trying to remember details as you flip.
Overall, I would still highly recommend this book for anyone trying to understand relativity better.
September 14, 2017
Absolutely fantastic. One of the most outstanding physics books I've ever had the good luck of encountering. I went from having some vague notions of special relativity to having an excellent intuition for both special and general relativity. I can't wait to—hopefully—reread this with my children and do all the spacetime-warping experiments with paper tubes and cones.
In short: if you have even the faintest interest in understanding spacetime, READ THIS. If you read only one physics book about relativity in your entire life, make it this one.
In short: if you have even the faintest interest in understanding spacetime, READ THIS. If you read only one physics book about relativity in your entire life, make it this one.
August 17, 2022
I was halfway done when I had to reluctantly give back the book to the library. It is absolutely mind blowing; explaining Einstein's theory of Relativity in a surprisingly intuitive way with illustrations and guiding questions to help you get around such a complex subject. If I get my hands on this book again, I would definitely finish it.
September 24, 2024
Wonderful explanation of Special and General Relativity through easy-to-understand diagrams. Read it and you'll know *exactly* why time slows down near the speed of light, why space shrinks, and why energy has mass, mass has energy, and how bent time causes gravity. Exemplary clarity.
September 23, 2017
Although science has evolved so much since 1985 and new theories have emerged this book is the most comprehensive, simple and entertaining visualization of Einstein's Relativity theory.
January 19, 2020
Non ho avuto l'occasione di leggerlo con le illustrazioni :(
June 11, 2023
Some examples were helpful some were somewhat confusing.
July 12, 2019
A wonderful book that gave me a boost in confidence. It's obviously a far cry from understanding the math behind Einstein's theory of relativity, but I can confidently say I do indeed have it visualized.
March 19, 2012
Epstein uses visual props to illustrate his points about time, space and light. Some are helpful. Many are not, at least for those not well versed in physics.
Epstein illustrates how a space dimension (object in space) shortens with motion and how density (mass) increases (atoms get compressed into smaller volume). Less clear are his illustrations of how time varies with motion and how space and time are one thing (increase in distance/space, slows time; increase in time shortens distance/space?). It's easy to get confused.
Perhaps better than other writers, Epstein attempts to explain the role of light in the E=MC2 equation. The speed of light squared constitutes two of that equation's five characters but, generally, that part of the equation is not explained by writers on Einstein's theory. Working through this systematically, the equation states that at some fundamental level, energy and mass are the same thing. How much energy is in mass? Epstein explains (I believe) that light is used to measure the amount of energy in mass (mass is the amount of force times the distance the force pushes it?). Getting this far, if I did, is somehow rewarding. There's more to Epstein's book than this and he provides the reader with another way to try to decipher Einstein's thought.
Epstein illustrates how a space dimension (object in space) shortens with motion and how density (mass) increases (atoms get compressed into smaller volume). Less clear are his illustrations of how time varies with motion and how space and time are one thing (increase in distance/space, slows time; increase in time shortens distance/space?). It's easy to get confused.
Perhaps better than other writers, Epstein attempts to explain the role of light in the E=MC2 equation. The speed of light squared constitutes two of that equation's five characters but, generally, that part of the equation is not explained by writers on Einstein's theory. Working through this systematically, the equation states that at some fundamental level, energy and mass are the same thing. How much energy is in mass? Epstein explains (I believe) that light is used to measure the amount of energy in mass (mass is the amount of force times the distance the force pushes it?). Getting this far, if I did, is somehow rewarding. There's more to Epstein's book than this and he provides the reader with another way to try to decipher Einstein's thought.
September 24, 2009
This is one of my favorite non-fiction books. I have always had an interest in relativistic physics, but never cared for all that math that they made us run the numbers through in High School and at college. The great part about this book is that it explains relativity as easily as if you were showing a child how to tie his shoes. You see... just find a space ship, pilot it close to the speed of light, and voila, time slows down! The book gently guides the reader starting at the very basics of physics, and then showing step-by-step how it is simple to conclude (given certain experiments) that time is relative, that gravity bends space-time, that moving faster causes an object to gain mass, that relativistic speeds induce relativistic shortening in the direction of travel, etc. I read this book when I was thirteen years old, and I would recommend it to people even younger who are interested in the subject. Deeper scientific minds might find the slowed explanations a little beneath them, but would benefit from the reading nonetheless!
July 24, 2009
Recommended by physics teacher and colleague David, this is a book not for dummies but for those needing models, analogies, and myths to visualize the theory of relativity. Although I consider myself reasonably intelligent, a number of the ideas continue to escape my most dogged pursuit; nonetheless, I did plow on ahead and came away with a far greater grasp of some general and specific features of the universe. For instance, the reason light doesn't escape a black hole is not that gravity's strength keeps photons from moving away, but because in the gravitational field of a black hole, time stops. The relationships between time, space, gravity, and motion are bewildering and counter-intuitive to our Euclidean scale, but Epstein works very hard with good images and even exercises to help. I've returned and reviewed it many times. I think the ideas slip in the side door and resist being dragged in the front.
September 15, 2014
Uses almost no equations to explain the relationships between space, time, and mass as revealed by Einstein's theories of relativity, and even debunks some of the analogies and images used by other Einstein popularizers (including Martin Gardner). If you can understand a speedometer and have a few sheets of paper available, Epstein will make you see relativity—this is a very cool book!
September 4, 2007
Eventhough nearly a decade has passed since reading/looking at this one, it is, relatively speaking, a blink of an eye since I read Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and delighted in substituting the relatively rebellious word, for the age of 3, "Shitty". I digress, as this book is illustratively NOT shitty, relatively-speaking.
September 5, 2007
This book makes getting a basic grasp of relativity easy even for people who aren't good in the sciences. I've loaned it out to a few people and they've mostly liked it.
April 16, 2008
Unique in pedagogy. Brilliantly simple.
April 20, 2015
confused AND confusing! Read anything by Feynman. (Or better watch on youtube.)
April 23, 2021
Read and reviewed many years ago, am even quoted on the cover.
June 28, 2021
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