William,
Nicely written essay, non controversial as needed from an undergrad, and well presented.
But a few points; Neils Bohr almost failed young Heisenberg's thesis as he 'missed' the lense interaction. In saying; "...Time, by observation, is the movement of the hands on a clock to another location on its face. Each of these cases involves the use of analyzing differences which can be observed by the senses."
I must point out the most important part to understanding is similarly left out; The signal emissions (propagating artifacts), the detections (lens interactions), the change in 'rate' if the observer is moving, the wavelength changes between lens and brain, etc. Do we account for all the changes? I suggest better analysis is needed by all in my essay which I hope you'll read.
Then the Michelson-Morley Experiment. As Akinbo says, learn the doctrine to pass exams, but don't believe it! In fact the later Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment finding firmly supported ether (so publication much subdued!). But both had systemic and interpretive issued, identified here, with proper analysis; [link:arxiv.org/abs/1307.7163]http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.7163
We should also remember Einstein's words; "space without ether is unthinkable" !Leiden 1921). he had to remove it's 'absolute' nature, but mistakenly 'threw the baby out with the bathwater' by removing it as a 'local' background as well. He came back within touching distance in 1952 ("Infinitely many spaces within spaces" - moving wrt each other) almost repeating that from Minkowski's 1908 speech.
Curved space-time is found in space from both Refraction (by ions) and by geometrical mathematics. We have yet to discover which does most of the real job, but both could do 100%! But all that is sacrilege for many so take care.
Well done, and am sure you'll build to a crescendo in future. My belief system says your score should be higher so I'll wave my magic wand and do some maths...
Best wishes
Peter