Special Relativity: For the Enthusiastic Beginner

This book is written for high school and college students learning about special relativity for the first time. It will appeal to the reader who has a healthy level of enthusiasm for understanding how and why the various results of special relativity come about.
All of the standard introductory topics in special relativity are covered: historical motivation, loss of simultaneity, time dilation, length contraction, velocity addition, Lorentz transformations, Minkowski diagrams, causality, Doppler effect, energy/momentum, collisions/decays, force, and 4-vectors. Additionally, the last chapter provides a brief introduction to the basic ideas of general relativity, including the equivalence principle, gravitational time dilation, and accelerating reference frames.