Re: simultaneity

On Apr 24, 4:00 pm, PD <TheDraperFam...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Apr 24, 4:32 pm, rbwinn <rbwi...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Apr 24, 11:58�am, PD <TheDraperFam...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Apr 24, 1:37�pm, rbwinn <rbwi...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Well, it is certainly quite a theory, and you have to give Einstein a
lot of credit for imagining it, but unless you can show that lightning
striking the front and rear of the train would make two marks on the
railroad track closer together than the length of the train, you
cannot get relativity of simultaneity.

I haven't got the foggiest idea why you think the marks have to be
closer together to get nonsimultaneity. Suppose a lightning bolt
struck at 2:13pm on Tuesday and another struck at 3:48am on Thursday,
and the distance between them was exactly a train length. Does that
mean they struck simultaneously?

PD

No, it would prove that the two bolts of lightning did not hit the
ends of a moving train, given the times that they struck.

But they do hit the ends of the train. The marks are there.
And it is the length of the train. Which length were you talking
about? The length of the moving train (as measured in S) or the length
of the stationary train (as measured in S')?

The train has the same length in both frames of reference. Since you
stipulated that one bolt of lightning struck before the other, both
bolts of lightning could not have hit opposite ends of the train if
they left marks on the track the length of the train apart.
Robert B. Winn
.

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  • Re: transformation equations
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