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"Properly speaking, the world is not composed of 'things' as its elements, but of colors, tones, pressures, spaces, times, in short what we call individual sensations … The reason we assign a single word to a whole compound is that we need to suggest all the constituent sensations at once." -- Ernst Mach (the grandfather of relativity)
Although often the Supplementary Notes are fairly close to the discussion in class, this is not always the case. This can arise because students in the class indicate they would like a different approach to a topic, or are confused by the approach taken in the notes.
For example, student comments indicated a desire for more detail on exactly how the Michelson-Morley experiment was performed than is contained in the notes, and we had such a discussion in Class 4. If I find time, this material may appear in the next version of the notes on Special Relativity. When such time becomes available to me, however, is problematic.
It can also occur that there is material in the notes which we decide not to discuss in class, either because of a lack of interest or because time constraints force us to ignore some material in favor of other topics.
On the test and exam, you will not be tested on material discussed in sections of the notes which were not discussed in class. The corollary is that materials that were discussed in class but do not appear in the notes are examinable.
Of course, I hope that you will read the sections in the notes that were not discussed in class just because the material is so interesting.
Today we continued our discussion of Special Relativity. The corresponding sections of the Supplementary Notes are: