About 15 years ago I read a couple of books that explained relativity in simple/layman’s terms, with illustrations and thought experiments - things like (as I recall) throwing a ball forward and backward in a moving train vs. shining a light beam forward and backward in said train, how things change when moving at some percentage of the speed of light, how such things are perceived by those on the train versus observers outside the train, etc. - does anyone know which book(s) I might be remembering?
I believe it was “The Elegant Universe”
You might also have read The Universe and Dr. Einstein by Lincoln Barnett.
Originally published a long time ago (late 1950’s? early 1960’s?), I believe it has been updated and revised several times since. It was and is a very popular lay introduction to Einstein’s work.
ETA: It’s been around long enough, you might be able to find a full text on-line somewhere. Maybe.
Dangit, I really ought to bookmark this site, since it’s so hard to Google for… but the best introduction to relativity I’ve ever seen is on a website about aviation, of all things. The site’s name is something like “av8ion”, but not quite, because that’s not getting the Google hits.
Einstein himself wrote a popular book on the topic – Relativity: The Special and General Theory
Here is a book I remember having a copy of years ago, written by Einstein himself.
ETA: Ninja’d by CalMeacham – looks like the same book, but different cover.
To the OP:
There must be a hundred books that could meet your description. Do you remember anything else about the books, even just what the covers looked like? You might also scan amazon.com results to see if any book looks familiar to you.
Chronos, I knew immediately what site you were talking about and found it by searching for the author, John Denker. I haven’t read the section on spacetime, but his online treatise on the principles of flight is a wonderful thing. I never properly understood flight until I read it. For example, he explains the real reason for the shape of an airfoil. Most popular explanations of flight lead you to believe that the airfoil shape is fundamental and, without it, the plane would not fly. This is obviously ridiculous, since stunt pilots routinely fly upside down. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you do so.
My guess is Martin Gardner’s excellent Relativity Simply Explained. And if it’s not that, read it anyway.
Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland by George Gamow (an important physicist himself) is a great introduction to Relativity and Quantum Theory.
Since I went to the trouble to dig out my 30+ year old book, might as well post a link to it (Einstein’s Universe by Nigel Calder). https://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Universe-Nigel-Calder/dp/0517385708
Thanks all for the replies…I don’t remember a lot about the book, except that it had cartoony example illustrations similar to this (but much more well drawn/presented) - in any case I will check out the books/sites recommended here, seems like there’s no shortage of good stuff.
Relatively
This is a good guess!
Another possibility is Space and Time in Special Relativity, by Mermin.
It could any of a vast number of relativity books. Einstein used a thought experiment involving a train in 1905 to illustrate the relativity of simultaneity and for historical reasons and handiness trains often appear in pedagogical relativistic thought experiments.
The examples you give as well as the description of the illustrations sounds like a book I’ve been reading this summer: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory.
I’m also reading a book by the author of **The Elegant Universe **(Brian Greene) called The Hidden Reality, and his examples are weirder than throwing balls on trains (which is one of the first examples in the Complete Idiot’s book) and shell games, they’re like describing the universe as an 80s video game where you go off screen and reappear, and the dimensions shaped like pringles, and imagine if Cartman from SouthPark was on top of 100 mountains etc., so unless the other book has radically different descriptions, I doubt that one is what you’re thinking of.