This is the stupidest question ever asked on this message board.
But as the saying goes, there is no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid people.
According to the theory of relativity, in a nutshell, if you see another person moving in a car at 50 mph, and you are driving 40, well then you see that person move at 90 mph.
This basic premise, light and the speed of light, is the basis of Einsteins’ Theory of Relativity.
BUT WHAT IF YOU ARE BLIND???
Huh?
Actually, you’d see the other car at 40 mph but your watch would stop.
JB
Lex Non Favet Delicatorum Votis
if you’re joking, I’m with douglips.
if you’re serious, then if the other car is overtaking you, you’ll think it’s moving at 10 mph.
if you’re annoying, then (as you said ‘if you see another person moving in a car at 50 mph’) the other person will come to a messy end quite quickly.
Why doesn’t the sun come out at night when the light would be more useful? (Pratchett)
Serious answer:
Relativity isn’t noticeable at speeds that slow.
Not serious answer:
You can hear the difference.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
Hah, being blind wouldn’t inhibit the theory of relative motion, but it would prevent you from drive a car (at less than near-light speed, anyway) in most states. However, if the driver of the car in your example were, say, not yourself but a cousin or an aunt who was sight-impaired so the driver is a BLIND RELATIVE…
Then, of course, relativity would be flawed.
Unless the person was driving very fast, then we could say that he/she was flawring the car.
I’ll stop now, and have some more egg nog.
Come on, people, you do understand the question. The two cars are obviously moving towards each other. Let’s cut him some slack, ok?
theuglytruth: First, you do understand the 50+40=90 business. Einstein’s point, though, was that since nothing can go faster than light, the rules sort of change when things move very fast. (Please note: the speed of light is about 186000 miles per second.)
For example, if you were moving at 100,000 mps, and through a rock at 100,000 mps relative to your hand, would it actually be moving at 200,000 mps relative to an outsider? Einstein’s answer was no, it would not, because that is beyond the 186,000 mps speed limit. So, Einstein, then what does happen?
What happens is that time slows down. What feels like a second to you, actually feels like more than a second to an outsider. To you, it seems that you’ve traveled 100,000 miles in that second, but it was more than a second to the outsider, and so to him, you travelled less than 100,000 miles in that second. Similar things apply to the ball itself, and when you put it together, the 50+40=90 rule seems to be followed within each frame of reference, but from other frames of reference it can be seen that the “nothing faster than light” rules is also obeyed.
What about blind people? Blind people follow the same laws of physics as sighted people. For example, in your 50+40=90 example, the sighted people in car A look at the sighted people in car B, and they seem to be approaching at 90 miles per hour. Similarly, if a blind person in car A sticks his fist out the window, and a blind person in car B puts his face in its path, it will feel not like a 50 mph punch, nor a 40 mph punch, but rather it will feel like a 90 mph punch.
See some of you are trying to be smart asses, but I took the wind out of your sails with my disclaimer admitting my question WAS stupid up front!
So many unemployed comedians . . so few nightclubs. And obviously very few scientists! LOL
But seriously ladies and germs isn’t the basic tenant of relativity, the true test of an objects position . . .LIGHT?
Here is another example . . . if a human leaves Earth in a rocket ship that travels pretty close to the speed of light for 30 years . . . when he comes back to earth we will all appear to be 30 years older . . . while rocket boy will age maybe 5 or 6 years or so (I read this in more than one book.)
The whole reason for this theory is because the dude is traveling close to the speed of light, so the perception of time will be messed up for both parties (seriously if there is anyone that knows more about relativity than I do, I would appreciate some help here).
BUT . . IF YOU CANT SEE THE DAMN LIGHT . . . THEN HOW WOULD YOU MEASURE THE CHANGES?
I guess what I am getting at here is . . .why is light and the speed of light such a major part of relativity? Is it just an “example” Einstein used to demonstrate his point? Why not sound?
Oh, by the way, Keeves, thanks you. The unemployed comedian crack does not apply to you!
It goes back to these dudes named Michelson and Morley. They invented an experiment to see how fast the earth was moving in the “ether”, an imaginary fluid that was thought to permeate space.
They looked at light coming at us from in front of the earth’s orbital motion and compared its speed to light coming at us from behind.
They found no difference in the speed of light.
People were puzzled about this until Einstein said: OK, let us postulate that the speed of light is a constant. How would physics operate?
By building on some work already done by Lorentz, he came up with Relativity.
And relativity has nothing to do with seeing light. In a sense every particle in the universe “sees” every other particle.
‘See’ has a few meanings dude, don’t take it literally always…
Let’s change it for you. If you are going 50mph and a car is coming at you at 40mph, you are going to hit at the equivalent of 90mph.
Next, time, dictionary.
I don’t know if you’re actually interested or not, but my husband is working on a project for NASA called “Gravity Probe B” with the objective of either proving or disproving the theory of relativity. Here’s the link to the website: http://einstein.stanford.edu/
“There’s a snake in my boot!”
I sure was! Thanks for the link. More on topic then you might have thought, because if the OP had read the Relativity explanation at your link, his question would have been answered.
theuglytruth, the speed of light is important for this reason: It’s the speed limit for all material objects in the universe, and by “material objects,” I mean anything made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. In fact, not even a single electron can be accelerated to the speed of light. Einstein’s calculations showed it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object to light-speed. If ALL the mass in the ENTIRE Universe was converted into energy and somehow applied with PERFECT efficiency to the acceleration of that lone, remaining electron, it STILL would not reach the speed of light.
Sound and light are two totally different phenomena:
Light is a LOT faster than sound, for one. Light, as shown above, travels at 186,232 miles per SECOND in a vacuum. Sound travels at about 700 miles per HOUR in air at sea level.
Light is electro-magnetic energy and there are many frequencies of E-M energy which are not visible to the human eye: Radio waves, X-rays, microwaves, infrared, and ultraviolet, to name just a few. Sound is simply a wave of kinetic energy passing through a medium, either solid, liquid or a gas. It’s speed varies depending on the medium, fastest through certain solids, slowest through gases, with liquids in the middle. (It’s why things sound louder underwater. Water is a beter conductor of sound than air.)
And since those OTHER forms of E-M energy are all invisible even to people who can see, and they, too, travel at the speed of light, then what difference would it make if you were blind? Relativity works for everyone and everything, even non-living things.
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
But then again its only a ‘theory.’
Theories are always trying to be disproven.
handy, see my earlier post…it may only remain a theory for another year or so (launch is currently scheduled for April of 2000 I believe.)
“There’s a snake in my boot!”
Thanks for all the inpuit guys. I’m starting to get it.
Light is a MEASURING device for the theory of relativity. Also, light has special atomic properties that are inherent to all matter.
It’s Miller Time!!!
http://pwbts.com
But what is ‘light?’ And thru what medium does light travel, theuglytruth?
Uh . . . your scaring me, Handy.
Can we stop the thread now, Uncle Cecil???
Thank you for the link. : ) Recently, my 4 year old daughter and I were driving back home after dropping off my teenage son at school. She asked me why the cars going passed us were going really fast but if she looked out the windshield they were going ‘normal’. I was intrigued by her question. I asked her what she meant. In an exasperated voice she asked, “If I look out the side windows, the cars and trees are passing us really fast but if I look out the windshield, they pass at ‘normal’ speed. Why?”. I had an ‘ah’ moment. Theory of Relativity. I have being reading websites trying to find a ‘simple’ way of explaining it.
Back to your link… Prior to finding this thread (about 2hrs ago) I read on Nasa’s website that two of Einstein’s theories were proven. I would like to think that everything is connected. : )