The Fall 2006 Joint Meeting
of the
APS and AAPT New England Sections


AAPT Workshop

"Begin With Special Relativity"

Elisha R. Huggins
Dartmouth College

For nearly a century we have lived with an introductory physics curriculum that divides physics into classical and modern parts, and teaches only the classical part to the majority of students. The Physics2000 workshop demonstrates how to easily overcome this divide by starting with special relativity in the first week, and fitting in 20th century topics as you go along.

As examples, we will discuss introducing magnetism from Coulomb's law and the Lorentz contraction, teach the time-energy form of the uncertainty principle and introduce Fourier Optics using the pulse Fourier Transform capability of MacScope II.

Free Physics2000 CD, MacScope Instruction manual, and printed texts for those who attend the workshop.


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