According to cognitive and spiritual developmental theories, individuals construct and transcend their previous thought processes by incorporating more sophisticated ways of understanding the world as they progress through stages requiring efforts in different modes of thought. These theories focus on the importance of contextual variables in…

The relativistic addition of velocities is usually introduced early in the study of Einstein's special theory of relativity. The equations are simple enough, but randomly chosen velocities lead to unwieldy calculations that can dishearten the student. This paper presents tables of velocity components in two dimensions, composed of five or fewer…

This review presents an overview and analysis of the body of research on special relativity theory (SRT) education at the secondary and lower undergraduate level. There is currently a growing international interest in implementing SRT in pre-university education as an introduction to modern physics. For this reason, insights into learning…

We use apparatus based on two Geiger-Müller tubes, a simple electronic circuit and a Raspberry Pi computer to illustrate relativistic time dilation affecting cosmic-ray muons travelling through the atmosphere to the Earth's surface. The experiment we describe lends itself to both classroom demonstration to accompany the topic of special relativity…

Researching informal gameplay can be challenging, since as soon as a formal study design is imposed, it becomes neither casual nor self-motivated. As a case study of a non-invasive design, we analyze publicly posted gameplay videos to assess the effectiveness of a physics educational video game on special relativity. These videos offer unique…

A popular physics legend holds that scissors can cut paper with a speed faster than light. Here this counter-intuitive myth is investigated theoretically using four simple examples of scissors. For simplicity, all cases will involve a static lower scissors blade that remains horizontal just under the paper. In the first case, the upper blade will…

In this paper, I describe a lay course in special relativity (SR) given at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI's) at Florida International University and the University of Miami. Courses are also offered in general relativity quantum theory cosmology the nature of time, and the fine-tuned universe. Each course is presented in six…

In the present study, the comprehension levels of special relativity theory in prospective teachers who take the Introduction to Modern Physics lesson in the faculty of education science teaching department and the effect of writing for learning on their achievement is researched. In the research, a control group pre-test post-test…

The Einstein-First project aims to change the paradigm of school science teaching through the introduction of modern Einsteinian concepts of space and time, gravity and quanta at an early age. These concepts are rarely taught to school students despite their central importance to modern science and technology. The key to implementing the…

Undergraduate physics majors typically begin their study of modern physics with special relativity. It is here that physics students first encounter the counterintuitive concepts of time dilation and length contraction. Unfortunately, the derivations of these results are often cloaked in several layers of analysis that render them rather…

Special relativity theory (SRT) has recently gained popularity as a first introduction to "modern" physics thinking in upper level secondary physics education. A central idea in SRT is the absolute speed of light, with light propagating with uniform speed relative to the reference frame of the observer. Previous research suggests that…

Basis vectors e[subscript alpha] play a useful role in special and general relativity. In particular they allow an expansion of the vectorial spacetime interval dl along infinitesimal curvilinear coordinate differences dl = e[subscript alpha]d[Xi][superscript alpha]: (thus the definition e[subscript alpha] = dl/d[Xi][superscript alpha]). In this…

Einstein's special theory of relativity includes many non-intuitive and apparently paradoxical conclusions about space and time. One of these is time dilation, the fact that a clock moving relative to an observer runs slower than an identical clock at rest in the observer's reference frame. This is clearly exhibited in the extended mean lifetime…

A major consequence of special relativity, expressed in the relation E[subscript 0] = mc[superscript 2], is that the total energy content of an object at rest, including its thermal motion and binding energy among its constituents, is a measure of its inertia, i.e., its mass. This relation was first stated by Einstein. He showed that, in order to…

In special relativity, the transformation between inertial frames for an electromagnetic plane wave is usually derived for the time-harmonic case (the field is a sinusoid of infinite duration), even though all practical waves are of finite duration and may not even contain a dominant sinusoid. This paper presents an alternative derivation in which…