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The demand for improving student interest in science has increased efforts toward teaching Einstein's theory of general relativity in schools. Research has already shown that teaching Einsteinian gravity at the secondary level is feasible, however, appropriate resources must be readily available for science teachers to make Einsteinian gravity part of the school curriculum. This paper addresses student learning through activities that include simple hand-held experiments that help secondary school teachers and their Year 7 students grasp two key concepts that led Einstein to develop his theory of gravity -- the speed of gravity and his 'happiest thought' about free-fall and weightlessness. The first experiment allows students to conceptualise the speed of gravity. Three further experiments help them explore free-fall and weightlessness in different situations. We analyse the evolving conceptions of Year 7 students (N = 44) on understanding free-fall in an 8-lesson program that includes these experiments in the third lesson. Improvements in students' understanding over 8 lessons, showed that time and reinforcement were needed to assimilate the concepts. After eight lessons, 86% of students gave an Einsteinian explanation of free-fall.

The connections between light, matter, and energy are central to Einsteinian physics education in the age of renewable energy and modern technologies. Using activities, models, and analogies for presenting modern physics in the classroom is effective in helping students understand challenging topics. This paper describes three classroom activities designed to explore the physics behind a beautiful experiment that measured an atom’s mass increase when it absorbs a single photon and its mass reduction when a photon is emitted. The experiment demonstrates the direct link between E = mc2 and E = hf. Classroom math problems linked to the experiment use the powers of 10 to explore the large and small numbers associated with the physical concepts. The lesson we developed as part of the Einsteinian energy curriculum for year 8 students as part of the Einstein-first project in Australia, which aims to design and implement Einsteinian physics curricula for schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]