The purpose of this talk is not to present anything new. Instead I'd simply like to encourage you to consider taking an approach to teaching electrodynamics that was introduced in the 1960's by Edward M. Purcell in his well-known book, Electricity and Magnetism, in the Berkeley Series of introductory physics texts. Specifically, Purcell in his book used relativity to essentially derive the existence of magnetic forces and of electromagnetic radiation. His approach brings these subjects to life in a way that doesn't require a lot of math.

After a few introductory comments and disclaimers, I'll review Purcell's ideas and thus try to convince you to try this approach yourselves. The two ideas are first, that magnetism is a consequence of length contraction, and second, that electromagnetic radiation happens because of the cosmic speed limit, that is, because information can't travel faster than the speed of light.

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