The book is intended to serve as lecture material for courses on
relativity at undergraduate level. Although there has been much written
on special relativity the present book will emphasize the real applications
of relativity. In addition, it will be physically designed with the use of
box summaries so as to allow easy access of practical results. The book will
be composed of eight chapters. Chapter 1 will give an introduction to special
relativity that is the world without gravity. Implications will be presented
with emphasis on time dilation and the Doppler shift as practical
considerations. In Chapter 2, the four-vector representation of events will
be introduced. The bulk of this chapter will deal with flat space dynamics.
This will require the generalization of Newton's first and second laws.
Some important astronomical applications will be discussed in Chapter 3 and
in Chapter 4 some engineering applications of special relativity such as
atomic clocks will be presented. Chapter 5 will be dedicated to the thorny
question of gravity. The physical motivation of the theory must be examined
and the geometrical interpretation presented. Chapter 6 will present
astronomical applications of relativistic gravity. These include the usual
solar system tests; light bending, time delay, gravitational red-shift,
precession of Keplerian orbits. Chapter 7 will be dedicated to relativistic
cosmology. Many of the standard cosmological concepts will be introduced,
being mathematically simple but conceptually subtle. The concluding chapter
will be largely dedicated to the global positioning system as an engineering
problem that requires both inertial and gravitational relativity. The large
interferometers designed as gravitational wave telescopes will be discussed
here.

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