Spacetime: Relativity and Light
S07
Norman Derby
The enormous success of Stephen Hawking’s best-seller, A Brief History of Time, indicates that nonscientists have a deep desire to understand modern physics. The concepts of relativity are simple but they are subtle and have vast implications. To understand such concepts, you really need to talk about them a lot so that you can see what they imply in various situations. This course will give students a chance to investigate different approaches to relativity theory and to work out some example problems that will reveal its inner logic.

Research projects will be encouraged. Examples include constructing/computing drawings of what objects moving at high velocity would actually look like, developing a multimedia lesson in relativity for other students, or historical research on controversies among relativists.