Special Relativity

Besides being central to almost all aspects of modern physics, special relativity is weird. Did you know that a change of reference frame can turn an electric field into a magnetic field? Or that energy and momentum can be transformed into each other, just like space and time? Or that Lorentz transformations are just rotations along an imaginary axis? In this semilab, we will approach special relativity from a very modern perspective, using metrics, matrices, and group theory. Along the way we will learn to systematically think through all 'paradoxes' that might show up from wrong and naive applications of the axioms.