Session 2012–2013
The PDF files below are intended to be printed out on a
double-sided printer; the nearby links marked ss
are for
printing out on a single-sided printer, the links scr
are
versions intended to be read on-screen.
As an experiment, I'm making available audio versions of the lectures, that is, a podcast. Please do let me know how you get on. I'm interested in whether you use these recordings, how, when, why, where, plus any other feedback that occurs to you.
If you have any problems with the feed, or with the enclosed MP3 files, do let me know fairly urgently.
From this page you can download the notes for each of the four blocks of the Special relativity course. These four blocks are
In the lectures, I will presume that you have already printed out the relevant part, and at least looked over them. You will not need to, and indeed should not expect to, understand things first time, but this preliminary scan should give you an indication of what bits of the lecture you need to pay special attention to. Having said that, don't be in a rush to print out everything – as I spot typos or other infelicities, I will occasionally adjust the notes as distributed here.
If anyone needs, for example, large-print versions of the notes, I can produce those very easily.
The
dangerous bend
symbol introducing certain paragraphs is intended to
indicate passages, or even whole sections, you might want to skip on a
first reading. They typically contain technical detail for the
curious reader, or subtle points which are interesting but might
distract from the flow of the arguments, or even alternative ways of
thinking about the material around them. Think of them as extended
footnotes. The material in these paragraphs is not examinable, and I
generally won't refer to it explicitly in the lectures.
I've gathered together into a single document, all the examples which appeared in the various parts of the course, at the same time amplifying or adding the notes for those examples.
Solving problems like these is very valuable, since it forces you
to think through the sometimes rather tricky material which they
illustrate. However, the questions are useful only if you
work through them yourself, and so the notes added here are
intended only to help you when you get stuck, to allow you to check
the answer you've obtained, or to add further details. There is less
than no point in looking at the answers before you've attempted the
question yourself. You will think yes, that makes sense, I would
have written that
, and be filled with illusory confidence.
Available on Moodle
The example problems included in the lecture notes are pretty
various. Some are quite easy (more or less testing whether you're
awake, and probably indicating good problems to start with) and others
hard (requiring considerable thought and painful
algebra). As payoff, some are very valuable (ah, now I
understand!
) and others are drill.
I have an idea of roughly which problems are in which category, but
(a) it's not really my opinion that matters, and (b) the report that
last year's students said X
is much more interesting and valuable
to next year's students than anything I can say.
Can I ask you, therefore, if you could score each of the problems in the problem set, assessing them for (1) difficulty, and (2) value, in each case scoring from 0.0 (not) to around 2.0 (very). No more than one decimal place, please! Both dimensions here might be easiest to assess nearer revision time, so don't hurry to get these back to me -- some time near the exams would be great.
Questionnaire: on Moodle.
There's an Atom feed for the files in this directory, so you can be
promptly informed of when files change.
That's here.
Follow that link (your browser may do the Right Thing) or paste that
URL into a blog reader.
Updates:
recipefor working throug relativity problems in a systematic way.
Norman Gray
2013-02-24