PHY206 - Special Relativity

This course was taught up until last year (2010/11) as part of the 2nd year course. Most of this material is now taught in Y1. Therefore, the PHY206 relativity lectures have been completely reworked. To go to the new lectures and course materials follow this link.

Welcome to the course web site for PHY206 special relativity. Course materials are below.

Lecture 1 - Motivation, and some pre-relativity physics.

Lecture 2 - First principles of special relativity and time dilation.

Lecture 3 - Muon lifetime measurement movie.

Lecture 4 - Lorentz contraction and the Lorentz transformations.

Lecture 5 - Addition of velocities and relativistic spacetime diagrams.

Lecture 6 - The relativistic doppler shift of light.

Lecture 7 - Relativistic energy and momentum - 1.

Lecture 8 - Relativistic energy and momentum - 2.

Lecture 9 - Applications of 4-vectors, and some examples.

Lectures

Problems

Problem class 1 exercise.

Problem class 2 exercise.

Homework problems.

Lecture 10 - Applications and course review.

Practice exam questions

Practice paper constructed for practice in preparation for 2009/10 examination.

2009/10 exam paper

Lecture 11 - 1st revision lecture.

Lecture 12 - 2nd revision lecture.

Practice exam questions, and some solutions.

Solutions to above practice questions, revised.

(solutions to questions 1 and 2 given in lectures 12 and 11, respectively.)