Writing an Abstract for Special Relativity: Tips & Tricks

[Ashley1nOnly]

I will be giving a speech for my class and my teacher wants an abstract. I will be talking for about 45 minutes and i want to explain time dilation, length contraction, Einstein postulates, twin paradox, and the Muon experiment. But I am not sure how to put it all into an abstract.

 

[phinds]

Write down a synopsis of what you know but make it very brief. That's an abstract

 

[strangerep]

[...] i want to explain time dilation, length contraction, Einstein postulates, twin paradox, and the Muon experiment.

Well, you've got the skeleton of an abstract right there in that sentence. Just re-order some things a bit, and add more flesh. E.g., you could say something like:

"I explain how the 2 deceptively simply postulates of Einstein (mention them by name) predict unexpected features of the physical world, such as nonlinear addition of velocities, relative temporal dilation (add a few more words) and relative length contraction (add a few more words), (etc...). I also present the famous "Twin Paradox" and discuss its resolution.

If you can actually present that much, successfully, in just 45 mins, you'll be doing well.

Don't forget to emphasis the "relative" (rather than "absolute") nature of time dilation and length contraction, since this sometimes confuses people.