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Re: Relativity conundrum



Ken Caviness wrote:

But in any case it would not be logical for her to trust her own clocks as
giving "real time" but the station observer's distance measurements as giving
the "real distance". It is my impression that most apparent paradoxes in
relativity turn out to be due to such a mixed-reference-frame treatment of
some problem.


I found the example described by Valev to be quite useful, even if it used mixed
frames. The development using the Michelson-Morley experiment as found in many texts
comes up with t0/sqrt(1-v2/c2) for the time associated with the arm perpendicular to
the motion of the earth and t0/(1-v2/c2) for the other. This discrepancy strongly
suggests a length contraction of sqrt(1-v2/c2). However, it's not entirely clear
that it mandates a time dilation (because the times would be equal after allowing
for length contraction). Valev's approach lets the person in the train deduce a
length contraction for the x outside the train as the only reasonable explanation
and countermeasure for the deduced speed of light being greater than c, but by using
the passenger's time, totally avoids having to consider time dilation in the same
example - a much cleaner approach.

Bob at PC