The study of Special Relativity begins with the concept of a reference frame.

This is
just a particular way of dividing up space and time. Imagine someone standing still
on the surface of the earth. This person naturally divides up space by drawing
coordinate axes, and divides up time by having a clock which ticks, say, once every
second. Now imagine another person moving past on a train. The most convenient
way of dividing up space for them is also by drawing coordinate axes in the train
and having a ticking clock. However, the person on the ground sees the coordinate
axes on the train flying past them at a certain speed. Thus the person on the ground
and the person on the train divide up space in different ways; what appears
stationary in the coordinates of the train will appear to be moving in the coordinates
of the ground. The person on the ground and the person on the train are said to
have different frames of reference. What is meant by the "reference frame of the
earth," for example, is just the set of coordinate axes in which the earth is
stationary.
In 1873 James Clerk Maxwell presented his unified theory of electricity and
magnetism which predicted the velocity of an electromagnetic wave as being the
same as that of light ( c = 3.0108 m/s). Towards the end of the nineteenth century
it became apparent that there was a problem with Maxwell's elegant theory: it
predicted the same velocity for the speed of light irrespective of reference frame,
whereas one would expect that the speed of a light pulse emitted in your direction
on a train traveling directly towards you would have a speed c plus the speed of the
train. The only possible way out of this was to imagine that the measured speed
would actually differ from c , but that there was be some 'special' frame in which
Maxwell's theory applied exactly (and hence the speed of light would be exactly c ).
Nineteenth century physicists also believed that light had to travel in a medium
(just as any other wave does), and they called this as-yet-undetected medium the
'ether.' The 'special' frame in which Maxwell's equations applied was then supposed
to be the frame of reference of the ether. This meant that it should be possible to
measure a variation in the speed of light depending on one's velocity (that is,
direction) with respect to the ether. A series of clever and famous experiments were
designed and performed in the 1880s by the American physicists A.A. Michelson and
E.W. Morley. They used an interferometer to accurately determine the speed of light
when the earth was on opposite sides of the sun, and hence traveling in opposite
directions through the ether. To physicists great surprise and dismay, they could
detect no difference. Physics had to wait for Einstein's 1905 theory to resolve the
dilemma.
This SparkNote examines some of the basic effects of Special Relativity on time,
space, and motion. The next SparkNote on special relativity and dynamics extends
these ideas into an analysis of energy, momentum and force. The final SparkNote
on special relativity examines some interesting problems and applications of Special
Relativity such as the famous twin paradox.