Posted by steve on March 31, 19101 at 21:54:50:
In Reply to: Re: Time Dilation posted by litewave on April 17, 19100 at 10:06:13:
hhmmm no insult intended, but I think it might be a good idea for you to brush up on your relativity. If for nothing else than to solidify your vocabulary. I get the impression that you're getting a bit confused with the idea of constant relative motion.
So, let's try this... you have two reference frames A and B. Relativity says that if A was moving with a constant rate, relative to B, you can actually say that B is moving at a constant rate relative to A - they are interchangable arguements. In your experiment you had A and B moving at constant rates relative to each other, and were using that as the basis of your thought experiment. The problem with that if you're just interested in the two reference frames, you don't need both of them moving at the same time, but rather you just need one. Each one can say that IT is the one at rest, while the other is moving.
So now, that being said, let's say that B is moving at a constant rate relative to A (A is at rest). The person at A designates two points in space and wants to see what time intervals each frame measures as B moves between the two points. The person at B pes the first point and starts his timer, and the person at A starts his timer. When B pes the second point, that person stops their timer. And when A sees B p the second point, that person stops his timer. They compare and find that the person at B measured a shorter time interval than the person at A. This is due to time dialation and the theory around the Lorentz transformation. I think we can both agree on these results.
The problem comes in the following - In your experiment, it sounded like you wanted both frames of reference to be conducting this exact same experiment on each other, at the same time. In that case, both timers would observe the same time interval. But in order to do this, like you said, each frame would have to accept that they were moving in order for the experiment to be valid. And if they did admit they were moving with respect to the other, but made their observations as if they were stationary, it wouldn't be an adequate experiment to measure the time dialation anyway... simply because there is no control in the experiment.
I guess I'm simply saying, if they both agreed to travel the exact same distance, starting at the exact same time. And traveling the exact same speed... why would their times be any different? The'd be in the exact same frame of reference!:) The idea is to produce a comparison between two DIFFERENT frames of reference.
Anyhow, I hope that helps a little... until we meet again, have a pleasant day!
Steve
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