The interdisciplinarity of Special Relativity: A historical analysis

This paper is framed within the Erasmus+ project titled IDENTITIES, whose aim is to develop interdisciplinary teaching materials for pre-service teacher education. In collaboration with the research group in STEM education of Crete, a blended module on special relativity has been developed. The module is based on an analysis of the original texts by Lorentz, Poincaré, Einstein and Minkowski (written between 1904 and 1908), aimed to recognise the interplay between mathematics and physics implemented in the four papers. The analysis has been carried out by applying the “Boundary Crossing and Boundary Object” research framework developed in 2011 by Akkerman and Bakker. The results of the analysis show that Lorentz Transformations can be read as a Boundary Object and this lens allows for different nuances of the interplay between mathematics and physics to be recognised in the four papers. A series of activities to be conducted in blended mode in a pre-service teacher education course have been designed with the goal of exploiting special relativity as a context to develop interdisciplinary skills.