Riding on a Light Beam: Visualizing Relativity

Riding on a Light Beam presents a new method for understanding the Special Theory of Relativity, by analyzing how one must locate a moving object in time and space by separating the event, the observation, and the measurement. The book demonstrates conclusively that it is relativistic Doppler which advances or retards the observer’s measurement, rather than some undefined and unobservable effect on the event’s space and time due to velocity. Along with this major new insight, Riding on a Light Beam provides a polar plot for graphical solution of problems in Special Relativity that not only allows complex problems to be visualized, but also solved without computation. These problems include not only the Lorentz Transform but also mass, momentum, energy, and kinematics. The book develops a wholly new analysis of bodies undergoing constant acceleration using simple graphics and trigonometry, a problem formerly solvable only by tensors. This book is a “must read” for anyone wanting to truly comprehend Einstein’s Special Theory, which, as that great genius said, “was only geometry.”