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I teach a bit of special relativity to non-majors enrolled in the typical two-semester introductory college physics sequence. These are my goals.
1. Have the students develop an understanding of the basics such as length contraction, time dilation, relativity of simultaneity, energy, and momentum.
2. Spend only one week of class time.
You may immediately conclude that both goals cannot be acheived. I'm willing to budge a bit on either one, but if possible I'd like to go as far as I can towards acheiving both.
I have only two meetings during this week, so I start with a reading assignment and an online homework assignment, both of which are to be completed before the first meeting. The reading assignment is half of the chapter on relativity found in the typical College Physics textbook. (The other half of the chapter is the reading assignment for the week's second meeting). The online homework assignment consists of numerical calculations involving the relationships between ##v##, ##\beta##, and ##\gamma##.
$$\beta=\frac{v}{c}$$
$$\gamma=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-\beta^2}}$$
During the first meeting I go over the stuff I discussed above in Goal 1. In the past I've not been happy with the outcome and I'm thinking that a bit of spacetime geometry may help. The reason I think that is because the geometry is another representation, and multiple representations lead, in my belief, to a deeper understanding. Or they at least offer an alternative way to understand. Anyone who's studied relativity knows how valuable spacetime diagrams are, and the textbooks I've used do not take advantage of that.
So, with that in mind I've written up what I plan to be the lesson for that second class meeting. It's the attached PDF. If you take the time to read it and have feedback I'd appreciate hearing from you. Thanks.
1. Have the students develop an understanding of the basics such as length contraction, time dilation, relativity of simultaneity, energy, and momentum.
2. Spend only one week of class time.
You may immediately conclude that both goals cannot be acheived. I'm willing to budge a bit on either one, but if possible I'd like to go as far as I can towards acheiving both.
I have only two meetings during this week, so I start with a reading assignment and an online homework assignment, both of which are to be completed before the first meeting. The reading assignment is half of the chapter on relativity found in the typical College Physics textbook. (The other half of the chapter is the reading assignment for the week's second meeting). The online homework assignment consists of numerical calculations involving the relationships between ##v##, ##\beta##, and ##\gamma##.
$$\beta=\frac{v}{c}$$
$$\gamma=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-\beta^2}}$$
During the first meeting I go over the stuff I discussed above in Goal 1. In the past I've not been happy with the outcome and I'm thinking that a bit of spacetime geometry may help. The reason I think that is because the geometry is another representation, and multiple representations lead, in my belief, to a deeper understanding. Or they at least offer an alternative way to understand. Anyone who's studied relativity knows how valuable spacetime diagrams are, and the textbooks I've used do not take advantage of that.
So, with that in mind I've written up what I plan to be the lesson for that second class meeting. It's the attached PDF. If you take the time to read it and have feedback I'd appreciate hearing from you. Thanks.