C-ship: References and Further Reading

Special and General Relativity

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Gamow, G. Mr. Tompkins in Paperback. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. ISBN 978-0-521-09355-2.

The inspiration for this work; a great physicist makes relativity and quantum mechanics intuitive by adjusting physical constants into the realm of human experience.

Gamow, G. M. Tompkins. Paris: Dunod, 1992. ISBN 978-2-10-001399-9.

Edition française du livre cité ci-dessus.

Ellis, George F.R. and Ruth M. Williams. Flat and Curved Space-Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0-19-851169-4.

This is the reference I turned to again and again while developing C-ship. It's a highly readable yet mathematically rigourous treatment of special and general relativity. I've never seen a better treatment of how the various effects of the Lorentz transformation hang together in different reference frames.

Einstein, A., A. Lorentz, H. Minkowski, and H. Weyl. The Principle of Relativity. New York: Dover, 1952. ISBN 978-0-486-60081-9.

A collection of English language translations of the key papers that laid the foundation of special and general relativity. Few papers in the history of science contain revelations so great while remaining accessible to the educated generalist as Einstein's 1905 On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies which proposed the theory of special relativity. Re-reading it today remains a special treat.

Einstein, Albert. Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. New York: Crown, 1995. ISBN 978-0-517-88441-6.

The authorised English translation of Einstein's own popular exposition of special and general relativity. Originally written in 1916, it's not as easy to follow as recent treatments that have the advantage of eight decades of mathematical hindsight, but it's fascinating for the insights it provides into how Einstein himself visualised the theory.

Epstein, Lewis Carroll. Relativity Visualized. San Francisco: Insight Press, 1987. ISBN 978-0-935218-05-3.

This book is a gem. Epstein has a remarkable talent for looking at things from unusual perspectives that provide insights you'd otherwise miss. The many excellent illustrations complement the entertaining text.

Misner, Charles W., Kip S. Thorne, and John Archibald Wheeler. Gravitation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973. ISBN 978-0-7167-0334-1.

This is the ultimate technical reference for general relativity. Chapters 2 through 5 present the foundations of special relativity in the modern mathematical language of differential forms. Chapter 6 explains how, despite frequent claims to the contrary, special relativity can accomodate accelerated observers. Section 6.2 discusses motion resulting from constant acceleration like our C-ships provide, called “hyperbolic motion” since the world-line of such an observer forms a hyperbola in space time, asymptotic to the light cone. This book, with almost 1300 pages and precisely identical inertial and gravitational mass of 2.6 kilograms self-illustrates its title. If you're looking for the in-depth mathematical details of general relativity, you're going to eventually wind up here.

Rucker, Rudy. Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension. New York: Dover Books, 1977. ISBN 978-0-486-23400-7.

A view of special and general relativity that emphasises its geometrical underpinnings: higher dimensional spaces and non-Euclidian geometry. Enjoyable and eminently readable.

Taylor, E. F. and J. A. Wheeler. Spacetime Physics: An Introduction to Special Relativity. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1992. ISBN 978-0-7167-2327-1.

A complete, mathematically rigorous treatment of special relativity aimed at university undergraduate physics majors. This is the best technical source focused entirely on special relativity that I've encountered.

Wheeler, John Archibald. A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1990. ISBN 978-0-7167-5016-1.

This book, part of the Scientific American Library series (but available separately), is primarily devoted to general relativity, the field in which Wheeler is one of the most eminent researchers. Chapter 3 discusses special relativity in the context of the invariance of spacetime intervals, and contains one of the clearest explanations I've encountered of why the so-called “twin paradox” is not paradoxical at all and has nothing to do with acceleration; just motion through spacetime.

Ray Tracing

Glassner, Andrew S., ed. An Introduction to Ray Tracing. London: Academic Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-12-286160-4.

A thorough mathematical treatment of the geometry, physics, programming, and blue smoke and mirrors that underlie the implementation of a ray tracer, with chapters contributed by experts in the field. No specific ray tracer is discussed; the principles covered apply to any software implementation.

Young, Chris and Drew Wells. Ray Tracing Creations (Second Edition). Corte Madera, California: Waite Group Press, 1994. ISBN 978-1-878739-69-8.

A tutorial and comprehensive reference manual for the Persistence of Vision Raytracer (POV-Ray). It's much easier to learn and use the program with this book than from the documentation included with the software. An MS-DOS executable copy of POV-Ray and several ready to render models is included on a diskette bound into the book (this version does not, of course, include the relativistic extensions used to make the images in this document). A thorough understanding of the model building and rendering tools described in this book is essential before you explore the added complexity of relativistic effects.

Colour Theory

Hunt, R.W.G., ed. Measuring Colour. Chichester, England: Ellis Horwood Ltd., 1987 (Distributed in the U.S. by John Wiley & Sons). ISBN 978-0-7458-0125-4.

In-depth mathematical treatment of physical and perceptual colour theory, including interconversion between various colour systems, colour matching, and the properties of both normal and colour-blind observers. This book was essential in developing the (not entirely bogus, I hope) representation of Doppler shift used in C-ship.

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