The present website was built for my students in algebra based general college physics, taught in the summer session of 2005 at the University of Arkansas. It is pitched at that level of mathematical sophistication, but my approach is heavily influenced by that of two friends and colleagues who hold forth at different levels.

Professor Bill Harter at the University of Arkansas is now constructing a website to graphically represent complex (literally) and sophisticated concepts to help people in their understanding of relativity. Bill is an advocate of using ruler and compass, which he calls the "weapons of math instruction," at all levels of teaching physics.

The "ruler and compass" approach to relativity is not entirely new, as can be seen in Lew Epstein's widely read book, Relativity Visualized, first published over twenty years ago and still in print. Many of the diagrams and animations on this website are based on the diagrams in Lew's book.

The algebra and trigonometry appropriate to problem solving at the level of college physics is presented here based on the "weapons of math instruction" applied to diagrams that should be scaled to the problem at hand. The diagrams and animations on this website are built on frames of reference moving at 3/5 c, three fifths the velocity of light, so that proportions can be easily visualized since they are based on a 3, 4, 5 right triangle. To apply the same reasoning to some other velocity, say 0.2 c (instead of 3/5 c = 0.6 c), one should get out the "weapons of math instruction" and redraw the diagram in the proper proportion to see that the algebraic approach yields a result that makes sense.

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