Sunday, March 7, 2010
Special Theory Of Relativity And Me
By Ivan Ling
One day,
walking down the aisle of the library,
a book caught my interest.
'Special Theory of Relativity'
"What's so special about that?",
I thought.
E = mc2
Who doesn't know about that!!
Einstein's famous theory
Light speed is constant.
No matter how fast you're travelling,
Light is always moving at
299,792,458 Meters per second.
That's weird!!
What happens when you travel at the speed of light?
Light will still travel at c, 299,792,458 Meters per second.
How can that happen?
Imagine a car travelling at 40 km/h
A stationary observer will observe the speed of the car as 40km/h
However, an observer moving at the same velocity as the car,
(same speed and direction)
will find that the car stationary
while the world is moving at 40km/h
For light, an observer moving near the speed of light
will still measure the speed of light as it is.
This phenomenon is caused by time and space dilation.
That's right!!
Time and space as we know it is not constant.
It is a relative value
as opposed to the Newtonian and Euclidean concept of universe
which states that time and space are constant.
Let me explain.
The faster you travel,
The slower time is to you.
Which means,
when you are travelling very fast,
a second may still seem like a second to you,
but for a stationary observer,
It might seems that your watch is moving in slow motion...
A tick on your watch might take 5 seconds to happen.
Other than that,
your space contracts.
Or, should I say, Length.
1 meter might appear to be 5 meters to you
this is because your overall length contracts
to a stationary observer,
you might appear to be squeezed
like a disk.
This effect when combined,
will cause the speed(velocity) of light to appear constant
no matter what velocity you are moving relative to it.
This, is also why we can never see EM waves
Freeze and stationary
no matter how hard we try.
This, is the Special Theory of Relativity
Discovered by Albert Einstein.
RSS Feed (xml)
0 comments:
Post a Comment