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Need a ride? Hop in. We're going to take a drive on the Spacetime superhighway. You'll see things you've never seen before: time dilation, Lorentz contraction, the twin paradox, and the Doppler shift. You'll learn about the relative synchronization of clocks, the invariance of the speed of light, and the law of addition of velocities.
Spacetime depicts relativistic motion in one space dimension using two separate but related displays: the Spacetime Highway and the more traditional Spacetime Diagram. On the highway, objects in different lanes move at different speeds. The diagram shows a corresponding plot of position versus time that displays the locations of events and the trajectories of objects in spacetime. The two windows share data, so you can view them independently or see both at once using a split screen.
Spacetime provides an excellent introduction to the study of special relativity. It accurately displays all the clocks for a given scenario, and it performs the mathematical calculations so vital to understanding an otherwise difficult subject. This frees students from the entanglements of algebra and square roots and enables them to concentrate on the topic at hand.
The program is published under the GNU GPL licence. Its source code can be obtained using the email address bellow.