No Arabic abstract
This work analyzes the difficulties in learning and teaching Einsteins theory of special relativity. An extensive bibliographic review has been performed, considering articles published in the most relevant journals on science education, which were selected taking into account the following impact factors: JCR, SJR, IN-RECS and ICDS. The typical thinking of students and teachers is discussed pointing out that, occasionally, it does not befit the proper scientific perspective. Different educational proposals are examined and particular didactic implications are inferred. The conclusions of this inquiry constitute the basis of a proposal that relies on a Minkowskian geometrical formulation for teaching special relativity in upper secondary education.
Many professional physicists do not fully understand the implications of the Einstein equivalence principle of general relativity. Consequently, many are unaware of the fact that special relativity is fully capable of handling accelerated reference frames. We present results from our nationwide survey that confirm this is the case. We discuss possible origins of this misconception, then suggest new materials for educators to use while discussing the classic twin paradox example. Afterwards, we review typical introductions to general relativity, clarify the equivalence principle, then suggest additional material to be used when the Einstein equivalence principle is covered in an introductory course. All of our suggestions are straightforward enough to be administered to a sophomore-level modern physics class.
This white paper aims to identify an open problem in Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality --namely whether quantum theory and special relativity are formally compatible--, to indicate what the underlying issues are, and put forward ideas about how the problem might be addressed.
This Letter, i.e. for the first time, proves that a general invariant velocity is originated from the principle of special relativity, namely, discovers the origin of the general invariant velocity, and when the general invariant velocity is taken as the invariant light velocity in current theories, we get the corresponding special theory of relativity. Further, this Letter deduces triple special theories of relativity in cosmology, and cancels the invariant presumption of light velocity, it is proved that there exists a general constant velocity K determined by the experiments in cosmology, for K > 0, = 0 and < 0, they correspond to three kinds of possible relativistic theories in which the special theory of relativity is naturally contained for the special case of K > 0, and this Letter gives a prediction that, for K < 0, there is another likely case satisfying the principle of special relativity for some special physical systems in cosmology, in which the relativistic effects observed would be that the moving body would be lengthened, moving clock would be quickened. And the point of K = 0 is a bifurcation point, through which it gives out three types of possible universes in the cosmology (or multiverse). When a kind of matter with the maximally invariant velocity that may be superluminal or equal to light velocity is determined by experiments, then the invariant velocity can be taken as one of the general invariant velocity achieved in this Letter, then all results of current physical theories are consistent by utilizing this Letters theory.
Late time properties of moving relativistic particles are studied. Within the proper relativistic treatment of the problem we find decay curves of such particles and we show that late time deviations of the survival probability of these particles from the exponential form of the decay law, that is the transition times region between exponential and non-expo-nen-tial form of the survival amplitude, occur much earlier than it follows from the classical standard approach boiled down to replace time $t$ by $t/gamma_{L}$ (where $gamma_{L}$ is the relativistic Lorentz factor) in the formula for the survival probability. The consequence is that fluctuations of the corresponding decay curves can appear much earlier and much more unstable particles have a chance to survive up to these times or later. It is also shown that fluctuations of the instantaneous energy of the moving unstable particles has a similar form as the fluctuations in the particle rest frame but they are seen by the observer in his rest system much earlier than one could expect replacing $t$ by $t/gamma_{L}$ in the corresponding expressions for this energy and that the amplitude of these fluctuations can be even larger than it follows from the standard approach. All these effects seems to be important when interpreting some accelerator experiments with high energy unstable particles and the like (possible connections of these effects with GSI anomaly are analyzed) and some results of astrophysical observations.
An experiment aimed at testing special relativity via a comparison of the velocity of a non matter particle (annihilation photon) with the velocity of the matter particle (Compton electron) produced by the second annihilation photon from the decay Na-22(beta^+)Ne-22 is proposed.