Archive for August, 2009

“I live 20 miles per hour from the University.” Is that statement confusing?  It should be.  In Episode 20, we take a look at Rates and Functions, and discuss how they have been mistreated for the past century.  More importantly, we’ll take a look at how key concepts and mathematics can get confused if we don’t say the right thing.  For example, would you feel confused if I had began with “I live 20 miles from the University.”?  This Episode is a replay of a presentation that I delivered the Pacific Region AAAS conference at San Francisco State University in August 2009.

This Episode summarizes and synthesizes a lot of the material we’ve looked at over the past 9 videos.  New visitors will find that it serves as a good introduction to the material on the site.

The following specific points are covered in this video:

  • A brief history of moving systems equations and SRT
  • A look at the mathematical and conceptual mistakes we’re still making today
  • Revisiting the improved results to the Michelson-Morley and Ives-Stillwell equations
  • Implications on position-based navigation systems

In addition to the video, a PDF version of the presentation is available for download.
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