# Instructor guide: Wormhole throat and source-requirements audit

Course: Warp metrics, wormholes, and energy conditions

Suggested time: 70–90 minutes

## Learning target

Learners integrate geometry, source conditions, tidal response, and traversal constraints without equating a metric ansatz with a constructible spacetime.

## Prepare

- Review Morris–Thorne throat conditions.
- Declare the orthonormal source frame.
- Set a tidal-tolerance benchmark.

## Facilitation moves

- Evaluate geometry before source claims.
- Keep pointwise and averaged conditions distinct.
- Require a separate stability and preparation paragraph.

## Misconception checks

- **A valid line element is an engineering design.** It specifies geometry; source realizability, assembly, stability, causality, and control remain independent requirements.
- **One local energy-condition violation quantifies the total material requirement.** Pointwise contraction, integrated budget, duration, distribution, and quantum inequalities are different diagnostics.

## Accessibility and participation

- Use a sequential gate table.
- Pair spacetime diagrams with numeric throat diagnostics.
- Define every prime and frame label in prose.

## Evidence of learning

- A flare-out calculation
- A frame-declared NEC result
- A four-part geometry/source/tidal/stability conclusion

## Extension

Compare pointwise and volume-integrated exoticity while varying shell thickness and throat radius.

## Evidence boundary

Assess the learner's reasoning only within the declared model and recorded observations. Do not upgrade a simulation result into a claim about an unmodeled physical system.