Relativity and Cosmology: Einstein and Beyond!

Spring Semesters

Why can't you go faster than the speed of light? What does it mean to say that matter warps spacetime?

This course introduces the basic concepts of relativistic physics: Lorentzian spacetime and curved spacetime.

We also address many other topics such as the twins paradox, black holes, and Penrose diagrams.

Corequisite: no previous physics required - but you do need some calculus (Mat 285 or Mat 295) or the permission of the instructor.

Spring 2001 Course Syllabus (pdf format)

Spring 2001 lecture notes (pdf, 308 pages, 1.5 MB). These notes are also available as reader #6090 from the Campus Copy Center in Marshall Square Mall.

The .avi video of the Quarter and Feather demonstration

All notes, etc for PHY312 are in PDF format (this allows the best rendering of graphics, text, and equations together). Click below if you need to install a PDF reader.

* Homework Assignments *

Contact Prof. Marolf at marolf@suhep.phy.syr.edufor more details.

Relativity Related Physics Colloquia

Abstracts of the talks are available by clicking on ``Physics Colloquia'' above.

(2/15) Dan Boyanovsky (Pittsburgh), TBA

(3/1) Lawrence Kraus (Case Western), TBA

Note: Physics colloquia are (supposedly) at a level accessible to beginning grad students. Undergraduates attending a colloquium should not expect to follow everything, but may still find them interesting if they have some background in the subject.

Students in PHY312 do ``course projects.'' I have electronic copies of some of them, and here they are! (Posted with permission of the authors.) Some of the students did really neat stuff!

The Twin Paradox Song by Peter Cranson. Here are the .wav files for track 1, track 2, and track 3. Here are CD quality versions (large files!) of track1, track2, and track3.