Re: pinhole special relativity

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From: Jonathan Briggs (jbriggs@bentleyschool.net)
Date: Thu May 05 2005 - 08:08:21 PDT 

Subject: Re: pinhole special relativity
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 08:08:21 -0700
Message-ID: <74EB580CA84DEB47B3EE9DE1F4379495400EAE@bs-pdc.bentleyschool.net>
From: "Jonathan Briggs" <jbriggs@bentleyschool.net>

I would definitely include something on "things" that can move faster than the speed of light such as shadows and a laser dot on the moon while showing that at no point is the light moving faster than the speed of light.

I always liked that concept. I also think you could make some excellent java applets where you could change the relative speed of things and have their clocks change and length etc. (of course they'd be moving in super slo-mo).

If you set it up as a challenge that explored various "paradoxes" that could be interesting. "Can you fit the train in a tunnel half its size?" And then have a button that view the same event from a different reference frame.

It'd be a bunch of programming but it might make it clearer to students.
-Jonathan

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