Arvin Ash

Special Relativity simplified using no math. Einstein thought experiments (2019x38)

Udgivelsesdato: Aug 23, 2019

Einstein's Special Relativity Explained Simply - no math This entire revolution in physics started with a simple thought experiments, in the prolific imagination before Einstein even graduated from high school. Einstein’s theory of special relativity is convention today. But to understand how revolutionary it was for its time, it is helpful to look at what the conventional understanding of physics was during the time of Einstein’s teenage years. In 1801, Thomas Young had conducted a simple double slit experiment that showed that light behaved like a wave. So the theory about light at the time was that it was a wave. The problem is that a wave, it was thought, had to move through some sort of medium. They called this substance the luminiferous aether. But in 1887, two scientists by the name of Albert Michelson and Edward Morely came up with an idea to test the existence of the aether. The background ether was believed to be unmoving and static, so if the wave was traveling in the same direction as the earth, the speed of the wave should be higher in the direction of the speed of the earth. Michelson and Morley showed that there was no difference in the speed of light of the two measurements. This seriously jeopardized the aether theory. Einstein knew this, so he came up with a thought experiment as a 16 year old. His thought was to imagine that he was chasing a beam of light while traveling at the speed of light himself. What would he see? If young Albert could catch up to the beam, he should see a stationary wave. Yet that was impossible. Einstein knew such stationary fields would violate the equations of electromagnetism developed by James Clerk Maxwell 20 years earlier. So he came up with two postulates, and tried to figure out what the physics would be if the two postulates were true. Postulate 1 was that the laws of physics are the same for all inertial reference frames. Postulate 2 was that the speed of light in a vacuum is consta