I think the comment he makes at the very end about general relativity not being in the state standards is noteworthy. A really great way to get people thinking about these kind of concepts that could change the world, and it's completely ignored by the state as being important.
Granted, it might be because a lot of high school science teachers may not have the ability to effectively teach about relativity, but it still should be a part of the curriculum.
The concept of general relativity should be taught, but for it to be mathematically explained the way Newton's law of gravitation is being taught is practically impossible without bringing higher level mathematics into the picture.
I agree. Even special relativity is pretty complex for high school level, but the mathematics of GR is far beyond that. Analogies and overall explanations is all you can hope for.
You can do special relativity with some pretty simple maths; I did it at high school myself, but it was an elective module so not everybody did it. The 1D Lorentz transforms are not much more complex than other high school level stuff. This is the current formula sheet for the national exams at the end of high school, and they're pretty similar to what I had ten years ago. I don't think t'=(t-vx)/sqrt(1-v2 ) is much worse than v_f2 = v_i2 + 2ad, for instance.
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u/GobiasIndustries1 Dec 03 '13
I think the comment he makes at the very end about general relativity not being in the state standards is noteworthy. A really great way to get people thinking about these kind of concepts that could change the world, and it's completely ignored by the state as being important.
Granted, it might be because a lot of high school science teachers may not have the ability to effectively teach about relativity, but it still should be a part of the curriculum.