This work originated from an extension course addressed to high school teachers and offered by the Physics Institute of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The idea was to try to convince these teachers to devote a few classes to the teaching of elements of Special Relativity. As a youth, I spent quite a bit of time studying Euclidean Geometry, which turned out to be quite profitable to develop capacities of logical reasoning and spatial visualization. I believe that it is possible to take up Relativity in the same spirit, with the bonus of being a topic which draws undeniable fascination for young people.
Naturally, to use advanced formalism would make no sense in the present context and I chose to adopt the approach proposed by cosmologist Hermann Bondi in his book Relativity and Common Sense, using only elementary algebra and arithmetic but trying to present the subject in careful notation and with the help of attractive figures.
Here is the link to the text “Concepts of Special Relativity” in PDF format:
An animation software, written in the Java language and destined to illustrate the situations and processes analysed in the text, is available.
If you are interested in a particular topic of Special Relativity, here is a list of the topics covered in the text and in the software. Clicking on an item in this list, will open a page which briefly introduces that topic and indicates the parts of the text and of the software in which it is treated.