ar X iv : g r - qc / 0 50 60 75 v 2 1 7 Ju n 20 05 General Relativity in the Undergraduate Physics Curriculum

Einstein’s 1915 relativistic theory of gravity — general relativity — will soon be a century old. It is the classical theory of one of the four fundamental forces. It underlies our contemporary understanding of the big bang, black holes, pulsars, quasars, X-ray sources, the final destiny of stars, gravitational waves, and the evolution of the universe itself. It is the intellectual origin of many of the ideas at play in the quest for a unified theory of the fundamental forces that includes gravity. The heart of general relativity is one of the most beautiful and revolutionary ideas in modern science — the idea that gravity is the geometry of curved four-dimensional spacetime. General relativity and quantum mechanics are usually regarded as the two greatest developments of twentieth-century physics.