10. Curved Spacetime

Lewis Carroll Epstein in his book Relativity Visualized has developed several marvelous illustrations curved spacetime. Art has a copy of the book and model transparencies that you can curve and flatten out on the overhead projector to show:

  1. -- how the "curvature of time" causes objects to fall downward near the surface of the earth and causes time to run slower in the basement than on the top floor of the building.

  2. -- how the curvature of space near the sun causes light to bend and how this same curvature causes the orbit of Mercury to precess.