Lecture 4 | Modern Physics: Special Relativity (Stanford)

Lecture 4 of Leonard Susskind's Modern Physics course concentrating on Special Relativity. Recorded May 5, 2008 at Stanford University.

This Stanford Continuing Studies course is the first of a six-quarter sequence of classes exploring the essential theoretical foundations of modern physics. The topics covered in this course focus on classical mechanics. Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch Professor of Physics at Stanford University.

Complete Playlist for the Course:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CCD6C043FEC59772

Stanford Continuing Studies:
http://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/

About Leonard Susskind:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/people/faculty/susskind_leonard.html

Stanford University Channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/stanford

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Physics
• math
• calculus
• geometry
• algebra
• theoretical
• minimum
• special
• relativity
• classical
• field
• theory
• mechanics
• system
• of
• particles
• particle
• minimizing
• lagrangian
• velocity
• quadratic
• time
• derivatives
• space
• conservation

[tengyang2001]

Thank you Dr. Susskind, and thank you Stanford University for posting these videos up.

[Cyclist051]

Every one of these Susskind videos is so good. He really takes the time to explain what you need to know in order to understand what he's explaining. The essence of a great teacher.  This guy could teach Realtivity to gerbils!

[loopantenna]

MY god! This student is annoying! Makes me wish to shoot him in the head! Really patient teacher.

[Breakitdance]

i appreciate all of your great videos.

[Cyclist051]

And then - got it!! Made me feel so much better. Important lesson to learn - the right instructor for the student. Don't give up! Luzzie9 - I completely agree.  I'd kill to get to sit in on that course! If his work on black holes, information, and a holographic universe holds up, he should get his Nobel. And I hope he does!

[Cyclist051]

I have found both QM and STR to be topics where the teacher really makes just about all the difference for me. The text too, but the teacher is #1. I've had both STR and QM from guys who just could not, or did not, make it comprehensible to me. And I can get this stuff - I mean reasonably well. But not with those teachers. For whatever reasons - just did not work. Made me question my abilities in physics. Maybe I had just hit the wall. Give up. Then, try again, same subjects, diff instructors!

[ripperduck]

To gerbils!!!! Damn sign me up, I know I'm smarter than them. Groundhogs maybe not so much.....but yes I'm taking QM right now and these lectures are FAR better than anything I'm being given. Major reason is that Dr. Susskind has decades of classroom experience and most of my professors haven't been alive as long as he has been teaching. Without these vids I would have probably come close to flunking. Now I have a much better grasp of what to think....