This website is a write up of something I tried during my teaching years. I thought it would be good to show students that you can learn by thinking about something rather than having somebody tell you the answer. Besides, you get practice at thinking. My two examples were optics and relativity where you could start with just a few simple assumptions and then work your way through almost all of the subject. For optics, the assumption was that light is a wave and can travel on any and all paths from A to B. For relativity the assumptions were that the speed of light for everyone is a constant and that gravity can be replaced by acceleration.

Optics

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