Science Forums 2

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Originally Posted by CraigD

The point I was trying to make is not that GR is faulty – which I don’t believe (or truly feel competent to have an opinion on) - but that its equivalency principle is much less intuitive and compelling than SR’s.

That wasn't the impression I got from your post.

Originally Posted by CraigD

Alas, I can think of no way to make GR more palatable to the casual science student. Analogies involving marbles, bowling balls, and rubber sheets work fairly well to describe its conclusions, but its derivation from first principles lacks the elegant, geometric simplicity or SR’s.

The way to teach GR is with differential geometry, not with marbles and rubber sheets. If you don't find that it has an "elegant, geometric simplicity" like SR then I'm not sure you have as much familiarity as you say. The steps from Galileo-Newton to both SR and GR are essentially geometrical and elegantly simple. Once you understand the non-euclidean geometry and the definition of differentiable manifold.

IMHO the troubles of most people in understanding relativity lie in the ways it is usually taught and in historic misconceptions.