Abstract
The famous Michelson-Morley experiment discovered that the speed of light has the same value in all reference frames. Albert Einstein was the first who recognized the far reaching consequences of this observation and around this curious fact of nature he built the theory of special relativity. Starting from the constant speed of light, Einstein was able to predict many very interesting, very strange consequences that all proved to be true. We will see how powerful this idea is, but first let’s clarify what special relativity is all about.
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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Schwichtenberg, J. (2015). Special Relativity. In: Physics from Symmetry. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19201-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19201-7_2
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-19201-7
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