Related papers: Students' difficulties in understanding the basic …
We describe the difficulties that advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with quantum measurement within the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics. We explore the possible origins of these difficulties by analyzing student…
General Relativity is considered to be so far the best gravitation theory. However it is quite hard to use in real situations. The root of these difficulties lays in the non-linearity of the theory. Our aim was not to linearize the theory,…
An interesting question to explore in physics classes is whether gravity violates the second law of thermodynamics. Standard physics textbooks provide little to no discussion of the relationship between entropy and gravity, and the same is…
In this note, we discuss the significance of the general principle of relativity for a physical theory that abandons the newtonian concept of force and, hence, uses an entirely different conception for the ``cause'' behind motions of…
The Special Theory of Relativity and the Theory of the Electron have had an interesting history together. Originally the electron was studied in a non relativistic context and this opened up the interesting possibility that lead to the…
An alternative approach to Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR) is reviewed, which is motivated by a range of serious theoretical issues inflicting the theory, such as the cosmological constant problem, presence of non-Machian…
There has been a recent stimulus in the study of alternative theories of gravity lately, mostly triggered from combined motivation coming from cosmology/astrophysics and high energy physics. Among the proposed theories, one that has…
Einstein's theory of general relativity models the physical universe using spacetimes which satisfy Einstein's gravitational field equations. To date, Einstein's theory has been enormously successful in modeling observed gravitational…
This paper presents some ideas which might assist teachers incorporating special relativity into an introductory physics curriculum. One can define the proper-time/velocity pair, as well as the coordinate-time/velocity pair, of a traveler…
The physical basis of the standard theory of general relativity is examined and a nonlocal theory of accelerated observers is described that involves a natural generalization of the hypothesis of locality. The nonlocal theory is confronted…
We explore the difficulties that advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with non-relativistic quantum mechanics of a single particle in one spatial dimension. To investigate these difficulties we developed a conceptual survey and…
Higher-dimensional theories of the kind which may unify gravitation with particle physics can lead to significant modifications of general relativity. In five dimensions, the vacuum becomes non-standard, and the Weak Equivalence Principle…
The primary constraints for general teleparallel quadratic gravity are presented. They provide a basic classification of teleparallel theories from the perspective of the full nonlinear theory and represent the first step towards a…
The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects…
Studying quantum physics in upper secondary school is now a standard practice (Stadermann et al., 2019). But given the context of science education, with low recruitment numbers in higher education and poor attitudes towards science, it…
An axiomatization of the so-called Teleparallel Equivalent to General Relativity is presented. A set of formal and semantic postulates are elaborated from where the physical meaning of various key concepts of the theory are clarified. These…
General relativity and quantum mechanics are conflicting theories. The seeds of discord are the fundamental principles on which these theories are grounded. General relativity, on one hand, is based on the equivalence principle, whose…
The purpose of this paper is to provide an elementary introduction to the qualitative and quantitative results of velocity combination in special relativity, including the Wigner rotation and Thomas precession. We utilize only the most…
We present an investigation of game-like simulations for physics teaching. We report on the effectiveness of the interactive simulation "Real Time Relativity" for learning special relativity. We argue that the simulation not only enhances…
Computer simulations are enabling researchers to investigate systems which are extremely difficult to handle analytically. In the particular case of General Relativity, numerical models have proved extremely valuable for investigations of…