Some remarks about underused Loedel diagrams

We emphasize that it can be didactically very useful for students to realize how a space-time diagram of an observer, moving with a constant velocity with respect to another observer, can be obtained easily by means of a standard matrix of rotation, without recourse to imaginary axes and angles. These diagrams were introduced for the first time by Loedel and their main advantage over Minkowski diagrams is that a scale factor is not necessary to convert the units of an observer to those of another observer. We show this well-known property of Loedel diagrams using a new geometric approach. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd