Tag Archives: velocity

December 9, 2020

SR #X6: Moving at Light Speed

This is the key to understanding the Lorentz Transformation.

With COVID-19 putting a damper on social activity, “the gang” doesn’t get together very often, but we still gather occasionally (and carefully). One of the times recently I got into how, even though we’re all sitting essentially motionless in a living room, we’re moving through time at the speed of light. I explained why that was, and they found it pretty cool.

Then I ran into someone online who just couldn’t wrap his head around it — just couldn’t accept it (despite explaining in detail and even providing some links). Physics is sometimes challenging to our daily perceptions of reality!

However in this case, it’s just a matter of some simple geometry.

16 Comments | tags: frame of reference, light speed, Lorentz equation, spacetime, Special Relativity, velocity | posted in Physics

October 9, 2015

Vectors and Scalars (oh, my!)

By Wyrd Smythe

$Math!$ Put on your arithmetic caps, dear readers. Also your math mittens, geometry galoshes and cosine coats. Today we’re venturing after numeric prey that lurks down among the lines and angles.

There’s no danger, at least not to life or limb, but I can’t promise some ideas won’t take root in your brain. There’s a very real danger of learning something when you venture into dark territory such as this. Even the strongest sometimes succumb, so hang on to your hats (and galoshes and mittens and coats and brains).

Today we’re going after vectors and scalars (and some other game)!

15 Comments | tags: 2D, 3D, azimuth, coordinates, declination, dimensions, direction, elevation, location, scalars, speed, technology, vectors, velocity | posted in Math

March 19, 2015

SR #3: Relative Velocity

By Wyrd Smythe

Throwing like a girl!

I’ve introduced the idea of an inertial frame of reference. This is when we, and objects in our frame, are either standing still or moving with constant (straight-line) motion. In this situation, we can’t tell if we’re really moving or standing still relative to some other frame of reference. In fact, the question is meaningless.

I’ve also introduced the idea that objects moving within our frame — moving (or standing still) along with us, but also moving from our perspective — move differently from the perspective of other frames. Specifically, the speed appears different.

Now I’ll dig deeper into that and introduce a crucial exception.

11 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, Emmy Noether, Galilean invariance, Galileo Galilei, Mo'ne Davis, motion, scalars, Special Relativity, speed, vectors, velocity | posted in Physics