Excellent Teaching

The aim of the author is to explain "with hands" the mechanism of special relativity, through schemes to animate itself: the book is provided a small card with a slot (shown right a one-dimensional space), which must be slid over the schematics provided for that (this shift included the passage of time - and the rotation speed of the carton). What appears in the slot is what is perceived by the senses at a time T, and that's it (there is nothing to cut or tinkering). This brilliant find that relativity, this extraordinary theory as opposed to common sense as possible, becomes accessible and natural a few manipulations.

The book nevertheless has its weaknesses, it may be better to know before the purchase to be disappointed: first, it is really too short: less than 100 pages, two on which is dedicated to the drawings. .. read it quickly, while some aspects deserved further deepening. Then it deals only with special relativity (it must be assumed that general relativity is not affordable by the same process). Finally, the reversal of relativistic effects in space-time 2D (moving objects appear longer in the slot instead of shorter in reality), though inevitable, is a shame.

Despite these imperfections (the last being independent of the will of the author), this little book is worth its 5 stars for the unprecedented and immediate understanding that this theory brings to the foundation of modern physics. Its didactic aspect is simply excellent. Suddenly, a suite or a more robust recovery, it would be great.