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Teaching students who are only barely comfortable
with two-dimensional geometry and trigonometry
about Minkowski diagrams and 4-space is really
not too practical. They already have problems
with abstractions, so those of us who teach
students t that level are pretty much required to
look at the differences between Newtonian and
Relativistic mechanics, and more or less leave it
there. In my classes I teach relativity by
starting with Einstein's postulates, and "derive"
the space and time dilation formulas
weird is clearly in the eye
of the beholder.
When something the student has
"known" for a long time is shown to be not true,
the "weird" label will almost always be applied
to the new material rather than the old.
Like many high school teachers, I learned the physics I teach
mostly from textbooks --someone has to read them! As you know,
Halliday and Resnick, Serway, Sears Zemansky @ Young all introduce
relativity the historical way.
I think that when we teach it that way, it's because true or not, we
like the narrative. And we like the dali-esque idea of shrinking
rulers and slow clocks.