Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions/week, 1.5 hours/session
Recitations: 1 session/week, 1 hour/session
Prerequisites
18.02 Multivariable Calculus and 8.02 Physics II: Electricity and Magnetism
Course Description
The goal of this course is to give you a thorough introduction to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, and to give you a brief introduction to core concepts of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The course is designed to be accessible to first-semester sophomores, and suitable as one of the first “core major” courses students encounter after completing the physics General Institute Requirement.
Older versions of this course have gone into the general theory of relativity more deeply than we will this semester. Although a subset of students enjoyed this material, getting to these advanced topics meant covering some of the basics quickly and less thoroughly. This worked fine for students with advanced preparation, but unfortunately meant that the course had evolved beyond being accessible to the typical first-semester sophomore. In recent runs of the course, the syllabus has been re-pitched to a level appropriate for students who are just beginning their in-depth study of physics.
Textbook and Lecture Notes
There does not exist a very useful textbook that covers this material at the right levels of both breadth and depth. In lieu of this, the standard reference for the course this term is Professor Hughes’s lecture notes. These notes provide a good guide to the material we will cover this term.
A few supplementary texts are also available; none of these are required, but you may find consulting them to be useful to get a different handle on this subject. Here are three that past students have used:
- French, A. P. 1968. Special Relativity. New York: Norton. ISBN: 9780393097931
- Resnick, Robert. 1968. Introduction to Special Relativity. New York: Wiley. ISBN: 9780471717256
- Taylor, Edwin F., John Archibald Wheeler, and Edmund William Bertschinger. 2010. Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity. 2nd ed. Boston, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 9780321512864
Assessment and Grading
Your course grade will be based on homework assignments and examinations:
- Problem sets: 27% of your grade will be based on problem set scores, divided evenly among
a total of 9 problem sets. - Midterm exams: two examinations, each worth 20% of your grade.
- Final exam: 33% of your grade.
NOTE: Problem sets and exams are not available to OCW learners.
