Re: Relativity conundrum

[Pentcho Valev <pvalev@BAS.BG>]

Bob LaMontagne wrote:

> 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 SAME approach is used in all textbooks for interpretation of the Michelson-Morley
experiment. See, for instance, J. Mulligan, Introductory College Physics, McGraw-Hill,
1985, pp. 732-733, fig. 25.11. The frame Michelson, Morley and the interferometer were
in allowed them to measure a speed of light c' = D1 / t'. In other words, c' is
EXPERIMENTALLY obtained. However the textbook discusses the event with respect to
another frame, immobile with respect to the interferometer but - note - in this other
frame the time (t') remains unchanged!!! Accordingly, the speed of light in the other
frame proves different from that experimentally obtained:

c^2 (t')^2 = (D1)^2 + v^2 (t')^2

I agree with that approach. The time (t') is the same in the two frames whereas the
speeds c' and c differ.

Pentcho