Spacetime Physics, Second Edition

by Edwin F. Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler
New York, W. H. Freeman and Co., 1992
ISBN:0-7167-2327-1.

A deep and simple overview of the principles of relativity.

ALSO AVAILABLE
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Exploring Black Holes,
Second Edition

The learner-friendly introduction to general relativity, revised and re-imagined.
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The entire contents of this book are now available under a Creative Commons license. Feel free to download, print, share, translate, and adapt, as long as you follow the (minimal) requirements of the license.

Collaboration on the First Edition of Spacetime Physics began in the mid-1960s when Edwin Taylor took a junior faculty sabbatical at Princeton University where John Wheeler was a professor. The resulting text emphasized the unity of spacetime and those quantities (such as proper time, proper distance, mass) that are invariant, the same for all observers, rather than those quantities (such as space and time separations) that are relative, different for different observers. The text has become a standard for modern physics and relativity courses, as wel as introductory physics.

The Second Edition of Spacetime Physics embodies what the authors had learned during an additional quarter century of teaching and research. They updated the text to reflect the immense strides in physics during the same period and modernized and increased the number of exercises, for which the First Edition was famous. Enrichment boxes provide expanded coverage of intriguing topics. Sample problems encourage students to exercise their newfound power. An enlarged final chapter on general relativity includes material on gravity waves, black holes, and cosmology.

Also available for full download from the Internet Archive.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

http://eftaylor.com/spacetimephysics
    name asc type size date description
download 0000_spacetime_physics.pdf pdf 104.0 MB 11-02-19 FULL BOOK (searchable)
download 00_cover_toc.pdf pdf 2.4 MB 11-02-19 Front/back covers (inside and outside), front matter, table of contents
download 01_chapter1.pdf pdf 7.9 MB 11-02-19 Chapter 1 - Spacetime: Overview
download 02_chapter2.pdf pdf 9.5 MB 11-02-19 Chapter 2 - Floating Free
download 03_chapter3.pdf pdf 13.8 MB 11-02-19 Chapter 3 - Same Laws for All
download 04a_special_topic.pdf pdf 8.2 MB 11-02-19 Special Topic - Lorentz Transformation
download 04_chapter4.pdf pdf 5.8 MB 11-02-19 Chapter 4 - Trip to Canopus
download 05_chapter5.pdf pdf 10.5 MB 11-02-19 Chapter 5 - Trekking through Spacetime
download 06_chapter6.pdf pdf 6.0 MB 11-02-19 Chapter 6 - Regions of Spacetime
download 07_chapter7.pdf pdf 9.9 MB 11-02-19 Chapter 7 - Momenergy
download 08_chapter8.pdf pdf 17.6 MB 11-02-19 Chapter 8 - Collide. Create. Annihilate.
download 09_chapter9.pdf pdf 8.0 MB 11-02-19 Chapter 9 - Gravity: Curved Spacetime in Action
download 10a_answers.pdf pdf 1.2 MB 11-02-19 Answers to Odd-Numbered Exercises and Problems
download 10_index.pdf pdf 3.4 MB 11-02-19 Index