A Slower Speed of Light – A MIT Game for Learning About Special Relativity

The MIT Game Lab recently released an interesting game designed to demonstrate the visual effects of special relativity. A Slower Speed of Light seems simple enough on the surface, you walk through virtual worlds picking up orbs, but the game gets quite difficult because of the visual effects. The game attempts to mirror the speed of light to the player’s actual walking pace which is what changes the visual complexity displayed in each level of the game. Learn more about the game in the video below.

Applications for Education
I won’t pretend to know what all of these things mean, but according to the MIT Game Lab’s website A Slower Speed of Light could be used to introduce students to the concepts of time dilation, Doppler effect, searchlight effect, and Lorentz transformation.

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