... there is the approach we might call "feeling at home in four dimensions".
This can also be called the geometric approach. The main ideas were explained
with exemplary clarity in Taylor and Wheeler _Spacetime Physics_ (1963) ... at
a level that requires only algebra and a little trigonometry.
Has there been any PER on the merits of the geometric approach (as opposed
to the entrenched approach that emphasizes Lorentz contraction and time
dilation)??? Has anybody tried teaching the geometric approach ...
-- with good results?
-- with anything other than good results?
The reason I ask is that the geometric approach seems to be heavily favored
by folks who do relativity for a living, and has been for forty years ...
yet this seems to have had zero impact on the people who create our
course-books. (I'm referring to the sort of books that are used as the
principal text in HS physics classes and/or first-year college physics
courses ... as opposed to relativity-only books like Taylor & Wheeler.)
This makes C. P. Snow look like a wild optimist -- we have a harsh
dichotomy within the physics community.
*) Am I wrong about this?
*) Is there any rational reason for this state of affairs?
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