Relativity for Poets: A Free eBook

[bcrowell]

Last semester I got my first opportunity to teach a new gen ed course that I'd created, titled Relativity for Poets. (The word "poets" in the title is a joke, which it turns out a lot of people don't get. There was no actual poetry in the course!) It was a ton of fun, because I got a group of students who were highly self-selected -- it takes an unusual history major to say, "Hey, it sounds like fun to learn about Einstein's theory of relativity!" The required texts were Takeuchi, An Illustrated Guide to Relativity, Stannard, Relativity: A Very Short Introduction, and Ostriker and Mitton, Heart of Darkness. In addition, I wrote up my own set of lecture notes, which I've now finished putting into the form of the first draft of a book. The book is a free download.

 

[ShayanJ]

The idea of such a course is interesting.
Also I glanced through your lecture notes. It seems to me you have interesting and fun explanations there.
Anyway, from your posts, it seems to me that you're having fun with your job as a teacher. Its really part of having a happy life to be able to have such innovations in your job and enjoy your job by playing with it from time to time. Good for you.

P.S.
I checked an urban dictionary, and here it says "good for you" is mostly not a phrase when you're happy for someone and is mostly rude. But I think you can say that's not what I meant!

 

[berkeman]

I checked an urban dictionary, and here it says "good for you" is mostly not a phrase when you're happy for someone and is mostly rude

Not at all, it's a fine phrase!

 

[PeterDonis]

I checked an urban dictionary

I strongly suspect this would not be considered an acceptable reference here on PF. Kind of like citing a paper from vixra instead of arxiv...