Abstract
A novel approach to teaching undergraduate students that the speed of light c is a physical limit to material bodies is presented in this article. Two different, however conceptually equivalent, 'gedankenexperiments' leading to the same conclusions are presented and discussed. The experiments are grounded on concepts from electrodynamics and have led to the same results that, if a material body trespassed the limiting velocity c, unrealistic physical phenomena such as attraction of same charge particle systems would then happen. The experiments presented herein are of such simplicity that they are capable of making high-school and entry-level undergraduate physics students understand the abstract concept of an upper-limit for velocity without even entering Special Relativity Theory.
Keywords:
electromagnetism; Physics teaching; Special relativity; speed of light; limiting speed
