Student consider several curves on a spacetime diagram and have to judge which curves could be worldlines for an object.
assignment_ind Small White Board Question
schedule
10 min.
build
A way to project the graph and a way for students to indicate their answers (e.g. with a small whiteboard).
description Student handout(PDF)
Object can't travel faster than the speed of light.
Lightlines have a slope of 1 (when axes are scaled to the same units)
Media
Student Conversations
Speed is Inverse Slope Students have trouble fighting their intuitions about speed being the slope on a graph.
Time Measured in Units of Length Some students are thrown by multiplying the time coordinate by a speed to get units of distance. This just takes a while to sink in.