Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2005 APS April Meeting
Saturday–Tuesday, April 16–19, 2005; Tampa, FL
Session B5: Teaching Special and General Relativity I |
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Sponsoring Units: FEd Chair: Richard Price, University of Texas-Brownsville Room: Marriott Tampa Waterside Grand Salon G/H |
Saturday, April 16, 2005 10:45AM - 11:21AM |
B5.00001: Relativity in the Physics Curriculum: Where, When, and What? Invited Speaker: Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (SR) shook the philosophical foundations of physics, and the physical foundations of philosophy, at the turn of the 20th century. Yet today, a hundred years later, its position within the physics curriculum – both undergraduate and graduate – is uncertain at best, despite being a focus of student interest. Students generally receive a brief, often confusing initial exposure to SR in their introductory physics sequence. After this initiation, SR may be encountered again by the student either as a special topic welded (unnaturally) onto classical mechanics or electromagnetism, or potentially as a stand-alone elective, either solely focused on SR, or as introductory material in a treatment of General Relativity (GR). The uncertainty concerning how SR should be incorporated into the curriculum continues with GR. Does it have a place in (at least) the graduate curriculum for more than specialists? Different approaches to placement and treatment of relativity in the undergraduate and graduate curricula will be examined. Is “relativity for all” a desirable and reasonable goal? [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 16, 2005 11:21AM - 11:57AM |
B5.00002: You Mean Now? Investigating Student Understanding of Time in Special Relativity Invited Speaker: With calls of increasing urgency to include exciting modern physics results earlier in the curriculum, it is important to probe the effectiveness of current instruction in helping students at all levels grasp basic targeted concepts. The relativity of simultaneity is a cornerstone idea of special relativity and lies at the foundation of most (if not all) paradoxes. It is also a topic that is routinely taught in courses that include the study of special relativity. In this talk, results of a multi-year investigation will be presented to illustrate the step-by-step process by which a detailed picture of student thinking was obtained through the design and successive refinement of research tasks. Excerpts from written questions, taped interviews, and classroom interactions will help illustrate that little meaningful learning of the relativity of simultaneity often takes place as well as show the intense cognitive conflict that students encounter as they are led to confront the incompatibility of their deeply-held beliefs about simultaneity with the results of special relativity. Implications for instruction of advanced topics and the preparation of instructors of science at the pre-college and university levels will also be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 16, 2005 11:57AM - 12:33PM |
B5.00003: Making Special Relativity as Simple as Possible (But No Simpler than That) Invited Speaker: I shall describe some notions about how special relativity ought to be taught, that evolved in courses for nonscientists (and occasionally scientists) over the past forty years: first teach your students how to solve simple nonrelativistic collision problems by changing frames of reference, using nonrelativistic addition of parallel velocities; extract the relativistic parallel velocity addition law from a simple thought experiment immediately after discussing the constancy of the velocity of light; lose no opportunity to remind students of the frame-dependence of simultaneity; be firm about the fact that moving sticks really do shrink and moving clocks really do run slowly; unless you're training professionals, skip the Lorentz transformation; do teach Minkowski diagrams, treating them as an exercise in elementary spacetime mapmaking. [Preview Abstract] |
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