Black Holes:Gravity's Relentless Pull

[rocketeddy]

A team of astronomers have created a web site that explores the mysterious phenomena known as black holes, and it's just won the top 2005 prize in the Pirelli INTERNETional Award competition - the first international multimedia contest for communicating science and technology on the Web. (spacedaily articleSadly, it's full of mistakes. For example

Comments

[cuprohastes]

Well write in with some suggestions then.
And actually, the travelling at light speed thing seems to have skipped any acellerationa nd deceleration. In "the Planet of the Apes", the original, it takes four years for the crew to go anywhere, two years to acellerate, and two years to decelerate, subjectively.

[rocketeddy]

I guess they're assuming non-standard propulsion systems like warp drive, which technically emulate motion without actually moving - which would also mean there's no acceleration.

But yeah, it really skips over a lot of science.

[cuprohastes]

But if they had warp drive they'd also skip time dilation.
Anyway, I think you should still make the suggestions, on hte off chance it helps!

[rocketeddy]

yeah, that was my thought. I dont think there's much point in me making suggestions, the award ceremony is today I think, lol. I'll just complain about it on here instead ;-)

[kht]

Isn't relativity fun?!

I agree with you that's it's important to be very careful what you tell people in order to avoid misleading them, and make some attempt at being consistent. (I particularly remember the direction of current changing between GCSE and A level.)

Truth is complementary to clarity. Can't remember who said that, but I think there's some truth in it.

[rocketeddy]

I'd forgotten that one. Atomic structure changes a lot, too.

I dont really understand why we feel we should teach kids that current flows positive to negative. I can't see it really being any different to grasp, and can cause a lot of confusion later.