Learning Relativity

I have borrowed my friend Jonathan's textbook on general relativity. Jonathan just finished his master's in Physics, and I am anxious to understand this most critical of physical theories. I got started in this because I've been reading "The Trouble with Physics" by Lee Smolin, which describes some of the conflicts between particle and cosmological physics, and their current unresolved state.

Now I know this definitely makes me a nerd, but I am already loving it. It's really so elegantly simple when you understand two basic facts: the principle of relativity, which basically says that there is no way to determine absolute velocity through observation, and the fact that observed speed of light never changes, no matter what speed you're traveling. This is the hardest part of relatively, I think, since it's definitely counterintuitive. I mean, we all know that if we ride a train, cars look like their moving only a little faster than us: like ten to 15 miles an hour. But if we're stopped, we observe them moving at the same speed as the speedometer, i.e. 50 miles/hour. But with light, it does work that way. If we travel in the same direction as a light wave, we still observe it moving at 186,000 miles/second, even if we're going 100,000 miles/second. That's flipping weird, but its been experimentally confirmed more completely than almost any other prediction in science.

Once you know those two things, you don't even need calculus, just a graph, some algebra, and maybe a Einstein or two of brainpower (at least to discover the connection between the two principles). Once you know the connection exists, any math or physics major could probably special relativity given some time and creativity (maybe I'm being generous here, but still, it's so elemental).

Maybe there's a physics major or two out there who appreciate this. If there's not, go ahead and laugh. But now that I have officially established myself as a nerd of the first class, I'm off to the text book. Yippee!