Related papers: Students' difficulties in understanding the basic …
The physics that underpins modern technology is based on Einstein's theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. Most school students complete their compulsory science education without being taught any of these Einsteinian concepts. Only…
In this paper we review two symmetry axioms of special relativity and their connections to each other together with their role in some famous predictions of relativity theory, such as time dilation, length contraction, and the twin paradox.…
The Einsteinian Theory of Gravitation ("General Theory of Relativity") is founded essentially; on the reception that the geometrical properties of the 4-dimensional space-time continuum are defined from the matter in it. Contrary to this,…
The perspectives of introductory classical physics students can often negatively influence how those students later interpret quantum phenomena when taking an introductory course in modern physics. A detailed exploration of student…
Physics education research has probed for the relevance of physics in students' everyday lives. Attitudinal and epistemological surveys have asked students if they think of or use physics in their daily lives. We have previously documented…
The general theory of relativity is currently established as the most precise theory of gravity supported by observations, and its application is diverse ranging from astronomy to cosmology, while its application to astrophysics has been…
We discuss the most elementary properties of the hyperbolic trigonometry and show how they can be exploited to get a simple, albeit interesting, geometrical interpretation of the special relativity. It yields indeed a straightforword…
In this lecture I build up the motivation for relativity and gravitation based on general principles and common sense considerations which should fall in the sphere of appreciation of a general reader. There is a novel way of looking at…
The interpretations of solutions of Einstein field's equations led to the prediction and the observation of physical phenomena which confirm the important role of general relativity, as well as other relativistic theories in physics. In…
In this article, we present several apparent paradoxes of special relativity and their respective solutions. These paradoxes have appeared since the advent of relativity in 1905, and in fact they are never paradoxes. From a didactic point…
Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard theory of gravity, especially where the needs of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics are concerned. As such, this theory is used for many practical purposes…
In this article, we argue that the theory of special relativity, as formulated by Einstein, is a philosophical rather than a scientific theory. What is scientific and experimentally supported is the formalism of the relativistic mechanics…
These lectures notes contain an introduction to General Relativity. They are addressed to a general mathematical audience with no specific background in physics. The goal is to motivate and explain Einstein's theory of gravity and discuss…
Einstein's special theory of relativity revolutionized physics by teaching us that space and time are not separate entities, but join as ``spacetime''. His general theory of relativity further taught us that spacetime is not just a stage on…
Each approach to the quantum-gravity problem originates from expertise in one or another area of theoretical physics. The particle-physics perspective encourages one to attempt to reproduce in quantum gravity as much as possible of the…
Preliminary results on a canonical formulation of general relativity based on an analogy with the string model of elementary particles are presented. Rather than the metric components, the basic fields of the formalism are taken to be the…
Special Relativity is often seen as a conceptually difficult topic, which in turn is difficult to effectively teach. This work focuses on the role of visualizations as a tool in teaching Special Relativity at the secondary or university…
Students are often mystified by the reasoning that leads from the postulates of special relativity to the requirement of covariance. This is partly due to the lack of transparency resulting from the failure to clearly separate the roles the…
We consider the domain of applicability of general relativity (GR), as a classical theory of gravity, by considering its applications to a variety of settings of physical interest as well as its relationship with real observations. We argue…
We developed a survey to probe student understanding of quantum mechanics concepts at the beginning of graduate instruction. The survey was administered to 202 graduate students in physics enrolled in first-year quantum mechanics courses…