- #1
FattyRNL
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Highschool physics student here with a thought experiment I would like some input on.
While learning about Newton's Third Law (are reactions are immediate and there is no delay) I had a thought about the speed of light and relativity. Imagine You have a stick with a length of one light-year. Person A and Person B are on either side of said stick, like so:
A ----------------- B
Let's say Person A moves the stick an inch or so to poke Person B. By Newton's third law, the entire stick moves instantaneously, meaning Person B feels the stick poke him instantaneously (ignoring the time it takes the end of the stick to travel an inch or two to get to him). Because the entire stick moves at once, he would see his end of the stick poke him at the same moment he was getting poked. However, if he looked down the stick at Person A (because he has eagle eyes), he would not see the stick near Person A move for another year. Would, given Person B's frame of reference, it appear the stick has stretched out to him, and that over the course of the next year the stick would look like it got smaller?
If this is so, is it safe to assume the opposite would occur to Person A? Would the stick contract into itself and get larger over the next year?
And if this is all stupid, I apologize. One quarter of honors physics and a couple of pop-sci books doesn't quite qualify me for good questions or explanations.
While learning about Newton's Third Law (are reactions are immediate and there is no delay) I had a thought about the speed of light and relativity. Imagine You have a stick with a length of one light-year. Person A and Person B are on either side of said stick, like so:
A ----------------- B
Let's say Person A moves the stick an inch or so to poke Person B. By Newton's third law, the entire stick moves instantaneously, meaning Person B feels the stick poke him instantaneously (ignoring the time it takes the end of the stick to travel an inch or two to get to him). Because the entire stick moves at once, he would see his end of the stick poke him at the same moment he was getting poked. However, if he looked down the stick at Person A (because he has eagle eyes), he would not see the stick near Person A move for another year. Would, given Person B's frame of reference, it appear the stick has stretched out to him, and that over the course of the next year the stick would look like it got smaller?
If this is so, is it safe to assume the opposite would occur to Person A? Would the stick contract into itself and get larger over the next year?
And if this is all stupid, I apologize. One quarter of honors physics and a couple of pop-sci books doesn't quite qualify me for good questions or explanations.