B
BoJangles
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<p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Note I didn’t continue this in the other thread I posted which was touching in this subject, as to not interrupt other more advanced ongoing conversations.</font></p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">---</font></p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Wow special relativity is confusing the hell out of me. </font></p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">I'm working my way through a Frontiers and controversies in astrophysics lecture by Charles Bailyn (my new favourite lecturer), all is good. This lecture series and others I have worked through are basically introductory courses (as my maths is only just getting up to speed)</font></p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">My goal is to understand relativity though something is just not sticking for me (Note: as I can’t ask Charles, I’ll ask you guys instead).</font></p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">My understanding of reference frames (simplified) are as follows.</font></p><ul><li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm"><font face="Calibri" size="3">There is no privileged reference frame (that’s an easy one). They are all as good as each other, standing in one, is just as good as observing from another.</font></div></li><li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm"><font face="Calibri" size="3">A juggler standing on a train doesn’t have to compensate for his moving reference frame (I can understand this as well). I.e. juggler on a train juggles just the same as a juggler standing on the solid earth ground (I pulled this example from a </font><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:115%;font-family:'Arial','sans-serif'">Leonard Susskind's SR lecture)</span><font face="Calibri" size="3">. To me this just means, the momentum given to the juggler is passed into the balls (no need to compensate there).</font></div></li></ul><p> </p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Say the train is moving at 51% of C (west), and someone on the ground is throwing a ball at 51% of C (East), the person on the train ( in his reference frame) just seen a ball fly away at C + 2%. </font></p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Now if old mate juggler went to throw the ball at a speed greater than C, physicists would jump up and down and say can’t break the speed of light (maths doesn’t allow it). Although no reference frame is privileged, none should be under privileged either. </font></p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">This kind of says to me, that you actually can’t speed anything up to even half the speed of light, just in case someone is looking from a different reference frame going in an equal and opposite direction, or inversely that your own reference frame isn’t moving at some massive speed( as proper motion through the galaxy would suggest ).</font></p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">There is something contradicting its self here, and I'm sure it’s the basis of why I do not understand this, no matter how many video lectures I sit through.</font></p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Calibri" size="3">In summary of my woes, why do reference frames seem pointless and anti intuitive? Why isn’t there are a base reference (the mother of all frames)? Actually you can ignore this one (I don’t want to prove physics wrong), just understand it and believe the results.</font></p><p style="margin-top:0cm;margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm" class="MsoNormal"> </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p align="center"><font color="#808080">-------------- </font></p><p align="center"><font size="1" color="#808080"><em>Let me start out with the standard disclaimer ... I am an idiot, I know almost nothing, I haven’t taken calculus, I don’t work for NASA, and I am one-quarter Bulgarian sheep dog. With that out of the way, I have several stupid questions... </em></font></p><p align="center"><font size="1" color="#808080"><em>*** A few months blogging can save a few hours in research ***</em></font></p> </div>