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Re: [Phys-L] gravitational waves (Ludwik Kowalski)



Thank you for replying, William.

1) As you certainly know, most elementary physics textbooks do not introduce special relativity before introducing gravity.

2) Gravity is explained in terms of Newton's laws

3) That seems to be a pedagogical barrier, for most high school and college teachers. What do you think about this?

4) What do other EPO people think about the need to overcome the barrier?

Ludwik Kowalski (See Wikipedia )

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On Apr 18, 2016, at 12:03 AM, William Katzman wrote:

A few clarifications….

1) Below is the link to FAQ about gravitational waves.

http://www.ligo.org/science/faq.php#what-are-gw
This is one of several FAQs. This FAQ is compiled by LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) Education and Public Outreach (EPO) members on an ad-hoc basis. This collaboration involves over 1000 people, but only a handful of them actively work on EPO.
Another FAQ is: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/LA/page/faq
And a primer of sorts is at: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/LA/page/learn-more as well as: http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~teviet/Waves/gwave.html and http://ligo.org/students_teachers_public/read.php .


2) The answers were given by "LIGO Science Education Center," whose director is William Katzman.

I had almost nothing to do with the FAQ at ligo.org, as most of it predated me. I work at the Livingston Observatory (which is only one small portion of the LSC) , managing their Education and Public Outreach. I am also in the handful of LSC-EPO folks. At Livingston we keep the explanation of gravitational waves generally non-quantitative since it doesn’t seem to add to understanding. Gravitational waves are transverse, although I find this to be a less critical distinction than many of my colleagues. We do use the trampoline model of the universe to explain gravitational waves. It is flawed - as the mathematics don’t work well, but it does provide several apt analogies - including the analogy that it actually can stretch - like space. Saying that gravitational waves are ripples or waves on that trampoline like model seems to get across the basic idea to a wide range of people, but it doesn’t get into the hairy details of it being a quadrupole wave. I think it’s smart to introduce gravitational waves in a general manner, because they’re in the news and therefore can serve to inspire a subset of people to study science more, ut for introductory students I wouldn’t approach it quantitatively since that requires an understanding of GR.


3) He posted a Phys-L message (on 4/13/2013). Is he a PHYS-L su bscriber? I assume so.

Yes, I (William Katzman) am a subscriber in digest format.

Cheers,

-William


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