How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog by Chad Orzel

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog Reviews

• 
  Mark Hebwood

  This shows that relative to me, dogs are more intelligent.
• 
  Aaron Bright

  I gave this book a three-star rating only because I wasn't smart enough to understand that last quarter. I was 100% with it and the way it explains some pretty complex ideas, but alas...it lost me, or rather I lost it, I suppose. Really enjoyed it, and I can firmly say, I definitely understand the world around me far better than I did before I picked it up.
• 
  Ramon van Dam

  I really enjoyed reading this, just as I did with its predecessor "How To Teach Quantum Physics To Your Dog". Once again Orzel uses his dog Emmy as a surrogate for the reader to explain a big physics subject, though I have to admit that Emmy sometimes asks way smarter questions than I could at that moment.
  
  Having read a good number of books on the subject of relativity in recent years - still purely as an enthusiastic amateur - I can say that this is one of the better ones. The author explains it quite clearly and goes deeper into it than you might expect looking at the title.
  
  I hope Orzel finds the time to explain more to both Emmy and myself soon.
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  J.P.

  This is a pretty good book. I will likely be reading other books on the subject to try to gain a better understanding of the subject but it is a neat way to introduce the subject in an atypical & clever manner. It's not heavy on the math & gives good examples to explain the concepts. It also goes a little into the history behind the discoveries that lead to the breakthrough & understanding of relativity as well. I remember seeing some reviews where some were annoyed by the "conversations between the author & his dog" & at times I could see how it could be taken as such. I think they provide a little comic relief as well as relief from the trying task of taking in a lot of the counter-intuitive concepts of the subject because your mind will still be racing & attempting to grasp these concepts as you go through these parts so I think there are helpful. Overall it was a good book but the subject itself definitely requires more reading.
• 
  Hubert

  Really excellent overview of modern physics to lay readers. Orzel writes in clear, concise and engaging ways. Diagrams are super helpful. At the last chapters, the author gets more hypothetical as the theoretical physics behind unified theory is not yet well developed still. Some parts of the book will come off as dated by the time future readers encounter this. Still a strong read.
  
  Minus 1 star for the incorporation of the dog interlocutor.... I appreciate the shtick but I didn't find the banter w the dog particularly funny!
• 
  Alex

  Go slowly, make sure you've completely understood what each chapter has tried to tell you, and by the end of this book you will grasp exactly what's wonderful about relativity and how it works without needing to actually do the requisite mathematics. My personal highlight was a chapter that really drives home exactly why faster-than-light travel and causality can't coexist in a relativistic universe.
• 
  Peter

  The theory of relativity, Einstein’s big idea. What is it? This book is a laymen’s introduction to the theory. Chad Orzel does a good job of explaining. Some Math is required along with spacetime diagrams. Weird not easy to get ways the universe actually works. Turns out E = mC(squared) isn’t the key equation! Yes, spacetime is really weird but very well backed by experimental results. The dog schtick gets a bit much but overall a good read.
• 
  Alison

  An excellent intro to the weird and wonderful world of relativity. I'm no expert, but I feel like it gave me at least a basic understanding of its principles. Conversations with a dog are a cute way to break down the ideas, but the dog's overuse of the casual "dude" address came off as a bit precious and tiresome. An excellent read!
• 
  Rachael O'Sullivan

  This was a great read and I found all of the topics well explained. This is a great introduction to relativity!
• 
  Roger

  Having previously read "How to Teach Quantum Physics to your Dog" I had a good idea of what to expect in this other book by Chad Orzel. In each chapter, Orzel seeks to explain some element of physics linked to relativity, while Emmy, his dog, frequently interrupts with questions or opinions. The concept is an interesting one, in that the role of Emmy is to ask the dumb questions that the reader might be pondering. This approach also gives Orzel an opportunity to restate what he's already written, therefore reinforcing the points he wants to get across.
  
  To a great degree this approach works and it also allows some humour to lighten the text. For example Emmy, rather than being impressed by what she learns, is quite scathing and sarcastic in places about how much physicists don't know about the universe. It's also clear that Emmy, despite being a dog (although no average dog since she can hold conversations), already understand a lot about physics - certainly more than does the average non-physicist who might be reading the book. Consequently, many of the points she raises probably wouldn't have occurred to "ordinary" readers. She's also irritating in that despite an in-depth knowledge of physics, Emmy is naive is other areas, such as referring to elevators [or lifts, in British-English] as Magic Closets, although I suppose a cynic might say that theoretical physicists may also have such an unworldliness about them.
  
  Notwithstanding these minor irritations, this is a good book which, besides covering the core areas of relativity, also ventures into related areas such as particle physics, cosmology, black holes, dark matter, dark energy, and unified theories (including string theory). I struggled somewhat in Orzel's explanations of Minkowski diagrams, but to a large extent I blame this on me reading the Kindle version where viewing pictures at the same time as reading the text is challenging. I would have fared better in this regard had I read a paper version of the book.
• 
  Juliet Wilson

  I won this book a couple of years ago as part of my prize in the Edinburgh Science Festival haiku competition. It's one of those books that I had mixed feelings about, I'm not a dog person and I thought the book would be silly or twee. So I only just a few weeks ago picked it up to read.
  
  I should have read it sooner! This book is brilliant! Orzel (who is a professor of Physics) discusses Einstein's theory of relativity with Emmy his dog, who is curious about the world and interested in learning more about relativity especially if it can help her to catch more bunnies. Emmy acts as the interested pupil, asking questions that the reader may well have about the topic (though from an unmistakeably canine point of view). The dialogue has been used as a useful vehicle for exploring ideas from ancient Greece onwards and Galileo is a scientist who famously used dialogues to present some of his ideas.
  
  One of the chapter headings in this engaging book about Einstein's Theories of Relativity sums up the author's approach 'Time Slows When You're Chasing Bunnies: Relatavistic Time Dilation'.
  
  The humourous sections featuring Emmy (and a cast of other dogs, a self centred cat called Nero and a host of probably very tired bunnies) act as introductions to each chapter which is then backed up with more in depth, rigorously scientific discussions of each aspect of relativity including black holes, spacetime and the expansion of space. The dog's point of view is cleverly woven into the more serious sections too, but in a way that helps the reader to see the science from a different and informative perspective.
  
  I really did find that I understood elements of relativity better after reading this book and I would wholeheartedly recommend it.
  
  The only thing missing from this book is an author photo of Orzel with Emmy.
• 
  Dawn Peers

  You would be forgiven for assuming that the nuances of relativity are beyond most human beings. I'm guessing that's the usual opinion (myself included, as one of those normal humans) however, as a fan of Orzel's writing and having thoroughly enjoyed (and understood) How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog I was interested in seeing how much I could wrap my mind around with this new tome.
  
  Orzel (and Emmy) return in a fantastically accessible book. Orzel's writing style is relaxed and as jargon-free as possible whilst easing you in to a notoriously complex subject matter. As Orzel's style is so engaging, it keeps you interested in the subject matter (as opposed to when you were studying physics in high school, which probably had you snoozing behind your textbook).
  
  Another winner of a book from Orzel. Buy it, read it, and astound your pub friends. Or at least know a little more about relativity :)
  
  * note I received this book free to review as part of the Amazon Vine program *
• 
  Michael Fishman

  Let's face it. Both General and Special Relativity are hard concepts to grasp. I've read many explanations for both. But to this day, I can only scratch the surface.
  
  Chad Orzel's book is a dialogue between himself and his dog. He's pretending that he can speak his dog's language, and he's trying to explain Relativity to his dog. This book is as simple an explanation as I've read. The humor can be corny at times. But the best thing about this book is that it illuminated much of theoretical physics for me. Especially the part about subatomic particles, the quest for a Theory of Everything, and how gravity fits in.
• 
  Ben

  Readable and never gets too heavy, but also nothing too different from other pop-level intros to special & general relativity. I enjoyed it because it'd been awhile since I'd read a book on the topic.
  
  Many sections were literally the exact same thought experiments that usually show up (observers moving relative to each other at high speed, the twins paradox, falling into a black hole)... except played out with cats & dogs rather than people. Cute, but ultimately just window dressing around the same discussion that's found elsewhere. To be fair, I'm not sure what a fundamentally different & fresh way of presenting the material would look like, so I don't hold it much against the author.
• 
  Tom Schulte

  Accessible and featuring a cast of characters to delight or ignore, this book agilely moves from special and general relativity to such contemporary topics as the Higgs boson and the Standard Model. At just over three hundred pages, this work is a compact general audience introduction that is succinct and artfully instructive. It is not the 'conversations with his dog' premise that can make this book a successful disquisition of relativistic physics; it is the economy and clarity of elucidation.
  
  See my full review online at
  MAA's Math DL.
• 
  Callie

  I started this book and didn't finish because I had to return it to the library, but I made it to chapter four. What I have read so far blew. my. mind. I never took physics in high school (I was more of a biology/organic chemistry nerd) so this was mostly new information to me and I was just amazed. He explains these difficult concepts as seen through the eyes of his dog, but I still had to really focus to understand what he was saying, so this is not a book I can read through quickly. I think I will definitely be picking it back up though, because this is a whole new area of science for me.
• 
  Nick Fagerlund

  I learned a lot from this and I'm glad I read it! The rhythm of the writing wasn't quite to my taste and the repeated dog comedy bits got old, but the physics explanations were top notch, helping make sense of some things I've never been able to grasp before. This is some of the highest quality popular science writing I've seen.
  
  It was also timely, because they announced the first gravity wave detection at LIGO pretty much as soon as I finished it and I was totally equipped to understand the news.
• 
  Jessie

  Fun and accessible.
  
  You can tell Orzel is an experimentalist; he mentions a lot of the experimental work that has confirmed the theories here or experiments that were/are going on. (There has been some key progress since the book came out, but some of that work is mentioned as starting up or being in progress in the book.)
• 
  Beata

  I read this book with my son (9). Despite having some background in math, I did find some explanations challenging. It may be because my brain is already too calcified to grasp some of the concepts. But all in all, the book is entertaining and offers lots of prompts for in-depth discussions with a science geek like my son.
• 
  Jeff

  Enjoyed the humorous banter between the author and his dog, but most of these physics topics are still over my head, even though I did take AP Physics in high school. I guess some things we'll just never nail down.
• 
  Kyrie

  I must not be as smart as a dog. The bits where he's talking with his dog are pretty funny. The actual physics were hard to follow. I never thought I'd write these words, but Stephen Hawking is more understandable.
• 
  Book Bunny

  2,5 bunnies
  
  I guess this would have been much more effective to read as a book. I don't think I understood half of the things and certainly don't remember much.
• 
  Dana

  Apparently, the author's dog is better at physics than I am. I gave up on this book. It is really cute and well done and I do recommend it to people (and perhaps dogs) who are better at understanding physics that I.
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  Richard

  Every so often, as you read this book, your brain leaps out of your head and gibbers to itself. It's a measure of the quality of the writing that you put up with this disturbing experience and return to it once your brain is successfully reattached.
• 
  Chris

  Good overview of relativity. Not as much math as Why Does E=MC^2. But it has a better treatment of things like why gravity effects time and the how the matter we see is only 4% of the total "stuff" in the universe. The dog conversations were funny in places, but they also felt force in places.