This book presents special relativity (SR) from first principles and logically arrives atthe conclusions. There will be simple diagrams and some thought experiments.Although the final form of the theory came to use Minkowski spaces and metrictensors, it is possible to discuss SR using nothing more than high school algebra.That is the method used here in the first half of the book. That being said, the subject is open to a wide range of readers. All that is really required is a genuine interest.The book is designed to confront the way students fail to understand the relativity of simultaneity. The Special Theory of Relativity was the result of developments in physics at theend of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.

Itchanged our understanding of older physical theories such as Newtonian Physicsand led to early Quantum Theory and General Relativity.Special Relativity does not just apply to fast moving objects, it affects the everydayworld directly through "relativistic" effects such as magnetism and the relativisticinertia that underlies kinetic energy and hence the whole of dynamics.Special Relativity is now one of the foundation blocks of physics. It is in no sense aprovisional theory and is largely compatible with quantum theory; it not only led tothe idea of matter waves but is the origin of quantum 'spin' and underlies theexistence of the antiparticles. Special Relativity is a theory of exceptional elegance,Einstein crafted the theory from simple postulates about the constancy of physicallaws and of the speed of light and his work has been refined further so that the lawsof physics themselves and even the constancy of the speed of light are nowunderstood in terms of the most basic symmetries in a four dimensional universe.