Trysse said:
This is a question to school teachers (and all those who know about physics syllabus at school).
Is relativity (special and or general) taught in school (pre university) in your country?
If yes, at what age are students introduced to relativity? What aspects are taught?
As far as I remember it was not part of the syllabus in the early 90ies. Or at least not in basic physics courses.
Special relativity, if it is taught at all, is usually in high school physics, which in the U.S. is typically taught in sophomore to senior year at times that vary since it is usually an elective. So, ages 15-18 roughly speaking. Probably the most common time it is taught properly in the U.S., however, would be in first year college physics, typically at the tail end of instruction on Newtonian mechanics. This would also sometimes include some very basic indeed qualitative descriptions of general relativity.
In isolated cases it might be mentioned in middle school (in purely qualitative terms), or even elementary school in a very abbreviated manner (e.g. "nothing can go faster than the speed of light") without more explanation.
This said, lots of brighter students from late elementary school (e.g. 5th grade which is usually age 10-11) onwards, have learned the gist of special relativity on their own and science teachers are happy to talk to them about it informally, or in the context of a gifted and talented program's supplemental instruction.
Often, it also comes up, not in the science curriculum, but in the history/current events/social studies curriculum, through the back door so to speak, as an explanation of the importance of historical events like the Manhattan project and atomic weapons, in which E=mc
2 comes up and Einstein is discussed to illustrate the magnitude of the difference between nuclear weapons ordinary ones. It also comes up sometimes in astronomy units in which the basic outlines of the standard cosmology are discussed. When I was in school in the 1980s this was probably the main way it came up.
Similarly, it comes up in the astronomy curriculum, which usually includes at least, the Sun and the planets and moons of the solar system, the idea that our solar system is part of a galaxy, the concept of the universe, the idea of the Big Bang, the idea that there are such things as black holes including one at the center of our galaxy, and the idea of the speed of light in the context of a light year and astronomy observations. The notion that gravity bends light at a qualitative level is appropriate in connection with this, as is the story of Einstein inventing GR and then having it confirmed by the perihelion of Mercury which tells the story of how the scientific process works and frames GR as part of the consensus scientific understanding of the world rather than just a weird rewrite of Newtonian physics. A picture book understanding of black holes, and a qualitative understanding that gravity impacts the rate at which time passes and is necessary as a result for GPS to work properly, again, frames GR appropriately. Talking about gravitational wave experiments in a qualitative way like the fact that gravity travels at the speed of light and that we can really see the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein a century ago also has value.
One can explain the astronaut paradox of SR without getting into the details, and being told that the fastest speed anything can go is the speed of light isn't very problematic until you are far more advanced and realize what implications that has that are quite counterintuitive.
Corralling SR and GR into special "advanced" topics, rather than just incorporating them into a more generalized study of nature and science as it arises, is probably the better approach. Call it SR and GR across the curriculum if you will. If you do it right, only the most mathematically savvy parents of your students will even realize that when you talk about black holes, or light years, that you are talking about SR and GR. Don't label it, just explain it as it applies in a particular context as something nothing different from anything else that is taught in science.
What do you think is the lowest age to start teaching about relativity? What are the prerequisites in Math and Physics that students need?
Qualitative instruction can be introduced as elements of an overall worldview pretty early.
Mathematically rigorous special relativity that includes actual calculations requires mastery of at least Algebra I and comes easier for students who have had Algebra II, Pre-Calculus, and/or introductory Calculus.
It would also be a pretty good topic for an after school science club activity for interested students, which would defuse the "relevance" objections to it, since lots of science minded students, especially at the middle school level, are really interested in learning about it even if they don't really have the mathematical tools to grasp it at a level where they can do calculations using it yet.
School kids are really eager to ask the big questions and haven't let their curiosity be smushed, which it tends to be by late high school and college if it isn't nurtured along the way.
Do you have an opinion whether or not it should be included in the school syllabus?
Not a strong one. On one hand, the existence of special relativity and general relativity are fundamental to our modern worldview, have some technological relevance, and at the most basic and fundamental levels are things that every educated adult are expected to be aware of.
On the other hand, the math of general relativity is beyond what almost all students, even at the college and graduate school level, who aren't math or hard science students at the intermediate or higher undergraduate level can handle, and plenty of people who use it don't really grok it until early on in graduate school.
The math of special relativity is much more tractable and well within the reach of a bright high school student or a college freshman.
Also, keep in mind that when it comes to including it in the curriculum, part of the problem is not just what the brightest students can understand, but what the large majority of science teachers are capable of competently teaching.
Elementary school science teachers aren't doing that because they were top of their class in math and physics. Even many high school science teachers may have been drawn to that by a love of hands on biology or chemistry and may not have a great understanding of GR and SR themselves, even though they have been drafted to teach high school physics, which can be pretty rudimentary.
High school math teachers are probably the only people in a typical K-12 school whom I would trust to consistently have an ability to really understand GR and SR to the full extent that the brightest students that they encounter could understand it if taught properly.
School teachers at the middle school and high school level are constantly barraged with questions about what in the curriculum is "relevant" to their students, over topics as mundane of Euclidian geometry and diagraming sentences. So, asking them to talk about GR and SR, which 99% of their students will never actually use directly, is a big ask.
But, on the other hand, SR and GR are really central to understanding a lot of "big questions" that science provides answers to about our world, in much the same way as evolution or plate tectonics do.
If I were a middle or upper middle class parent at a "good school" I'd expect my children to become familiar with them at a level that they can understand in the same way that I'd expect them to study Shakespeare and the American Revolution and the Roman Empire and the French Revolution. It is part of what we expect well-educated adults in our society to have some familiarity with, even though they aren't experts in it.
Just havin' fun with ya!)
