Was Einstein Right?: Putting General Relativity to the Test

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: "Was Einstein Right" is the first book (out of 37 on relativity which I own) that I offer someone interested in learning about Einstein's theories. It is interesting, clear and to the point. I have re-bought this book three times, as my copies are lent out and don't always make it back! haha I don't blame them!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: "Was Einstein Right" is the first book (out of 37 on relativity which I own) that I offer someone interested in learning about Einstein's theories. It is interesting, clear and to the point. I have re-bought this book three times, as my copies are lent out and don't always make it back! haha I don't blame them!

Rating:
Summary: a saga of modern science
Review: Everyone knows that Einstein revolutionized the theory of gravity. But only experiment can tell whether he got it right. Will recounts in clear and nontechnical language the story of how Einstein's theory was put to the test in earth- and satellite-based experiments from the 1950's to the 1980's. He describes how it is actually possible to see space curve by making very accurate measurements in the solar system, and he explains how those measurements were made by the Mariner probe to Mars, by radar surveying of the planets, and by bouncing laser beams off the moon. From these highlights to the three naked Stanford professors whose experiment is still waiting to go up in the Shuttle, Will sets out every aspect of this fascinating story

Rating:
Summary: important content, compromised presentation
Review: I recently read this book along with a student who was new to the topic and so have some idea how it comes off to a beginner.

What's good:
-It provides a good story and overview of the empirical side of relativity. This is a very good and important thing and, in the big picture, balances the criticisms I give in more detail below.

-The author does give interesting insights that are particularly appropriate to empirical investigations, such as his comments on precisely what are specific tests of General Relativity vs. tests of the Principle of Equivalence.

-With an insightful editor and another rewrite, it could be a thoroughly excellent and unique book.


What's bad:
-The title: at least the part in large typeface, which comes off as silly and sensationalistic and probably scares off the kind of audience who will most appreciate the book (too many other books with similar titles are hopeless pseudoscience). Fortunately this is not a book about sensational controversy, but about solid empiricism. Not about the simplistic question, but about HOW people have worked hard to determine to what degree Einstein was right -- the book is more sober than the title suggests.

-Content: It does not seem that the author was able to make a lucid choice about the kind of audience he wanted to write for: casual reader, serious physics student, or mature physicist? The book is too detailed for the first, too aggravatingly terse for the second, and too long on introductory material for the third. He goes into a hopelessly compromised level of detail on the conceptual descriptions of the experiments. There is too much detail for a beginner to maintain perspective (a non physicist often "can't see the forest for the trees" of an experiment) and yet too little detail to understand the experiments to the point where a serious student could reproduce the descriptions correctly (at the same conceptual level), or survive a quiz of some very elementary questions.

The author is inconsistent about laying out the assumptions of his descriptions (for example, is gravitational acceleration assumed constant over some distance he's talking about or not?), or he doesn't clarify some assumption until half a chapter later, well after you've knocked yourself out trying to guess what the assumptions were supposed to be. A student will not have an intuition for what variables can and cannot be dismissed or considered constant in any given experiment. Even after very conscientiously studying this book, you can still ask a student some simple questions about what would happen if you made a slight conceptual change to an experiment, and they will not be able to predict the consequences correctly.

If I were to restructure the book, I would make the main body be 1/2 to 1/4 the length, and just tell the historical "story" of the experiments in a way anyone could stay interested in, and I would push all the details on the experiments to a series of appendixes and add enough detail for them to be understood to a level where a student could be quizzed (or quiz themselves successfully) on some basic "why" questions. I would double or triple the use of illustrations (diagrams). I would also include a small introductory section or appendix on the basics of relativity for reference, and make clearer what prerequisite knowledge is assumed. If all this makes the book too large, then just cut out all the half-comprehensible details and make it more of a casual reading "history of science" book.

Classroom use: This book is not appropriate as a textbook for an introductory class on relativity. It would be good to have on hand as a supplementary reference, perhaps assigning one chapter or a few carefully selected pages from each chapter, to make students aware of the very important experimental history, but there are much better books for someone trying to get a clear idea of the concepts, and to read the book at length eats up far to much of a semester.

As currently written, this book is probably only fully appropriate to someone who already has a completely comfortable command of relativity, and who is interested in the history of experimentation.

The book has 4 or even 5 star potential if it underwent a thoughtful rewrite and reorganization. It's great that the book exists, the content is mostly in there... it simply needs a rewrite. As it stands, each new reader has to do too much of the work that the writer and editors should have done in the first place (prioritizing and clarifying). Hopefully there will be a new edition at some point.