Learning Centre

This page overviews the Learning Centre. It is the place to start finding out more about special relativity. The mindmap gives an alternative overview. The tutorials discuss traditional relativistic concepts, such as time dilation, and include more cool movies.

You can tour the highlights of the Learning Centre by following the "Next page" links in the navigation menu.

Fundamentals

What is the special theory of relativity, and what are the postulates it is founded on? What is special about relativistic optics?

Tutorials

Special Relativity and Physical Effects
Learn about the basic physics of time dilation, relativistic length contraction, and the relativity of simultaneity.

Special Relativistic Optics and Visual Effects
Find out about the slow light fiction used by some of our movies, such as the rollercoaster.
How do relativistic aberration, the doppler effect, and the headlight effect affect what we see? Compare these effects.
Why do some objects appear to rotate? This is Terrell rotation.

Tutorial animations
Accelerate down a desert road with various relativistic effects turned on progressively. Flying past and through a hollow cube shows dramatic relativistic aberration. Then find out how we made the animations.

Quiz

Take a multiple choice quiz to check your understanding of relativity.
Two levels of difficulty available.

About Einstein

A brief biography, some quotations, and his special relativity papers.
Places to find out more about him.

Glossary and Formulae

Definitions of some of the technical words used in this site. Some of the maths used in special relativity.

References

We have provided links to a few web sites about special relativity and relativistic visual effects, brief descriptions of a few of the many books about special relativity, and a bibliography of the technical literature on relativistic visual effects.