1. Why does the mud fly off the tires of a pickup traveling down the interstate? Copernicus had difficulty convincing his peers of the validity of his heliocentric model because if Earth were moving around the Sun, stellar parallax should have been observed, which is wasn’t. If Earth’s orbital radius about the Sun were magically doubled, would this make stellar parallax easier or harder to observe? Explain.

2. Why are there no hurricanes on the equator?

3. Special Theory of Relativity

4. Michelson-Morley Experiment

6. Einstein advanced the idea that the speed of light in free space is the same in all reference frames, an idea that was contrary to the classical ideas of space and time. For the speed of light to be constant, the classical idea that space and time are independent on each other had to be rejected.

7. Postulates of the Special Theory of Relativity The idea of an absolute frame of reference was gone with the idea of stationary ether.

8. First Postulate All laws of nature are the same in all uniformly moving frames of reference.

9. What would the light beam look if you traveled along beside it?

10. Second Postulate The speed of light in the free space has the same measured value for all observers, regardless of the motion of the source or the motion of the observer; that is, the speed of light is a constant.

11. Simultaneity

12. Two events that are simultaneous in one frame of reference need not be simultaneous in a frame of reference moving relative to the first frame.

13. This non simultaneity of events in one frame that are simultaneous in another is a purely relativistic effect – a consequence of light always having the same speed for all observers.

14. Question Suppose that the observer standing on a planet sees a pair of lightning bolts simultaneously strike the front and rear ends of the high speed rocket ship compartment. Will the lightning strikes be simultaneous to an observer in the middle of the rocket ship compartment?

15. Spacetime

16. Two side-by side observers at rest relative to each other share the same reference frame. Both would agree on measurements of space and time intervals between given events, so we say they share the same realm of spacetime.

17. space/time = SPACE/TIME= SPACE/TIME = c

18. Time Dilation

20. Lorentz Factor, 

21. If you are moving in a spaceship at a high speed relative to the Earth, would you notice a difference in your pulse rate? In the pulse rate of people back on the Earth? Will observers A and B agree on measurements of time if A moves at half the speed of light relative to B? If both A and B move together at half the speed of light relative to the Earth?

22. Space travelers on the way to colonize a planet orbiting a distant star decide to cook a “three-minute-egg”. Would a clock on Earth record the cooking time as less than, equal to or greater than 3 minutes? Why?

23. Skip Parsec ventured into space without taking his watch. Wishing to cook a perfect “three-minutes-egg” on board his fast-moving ship, Skip is forced to rely on a clock on Earth. He cooks his egg for 3 minutes according to the Earth clock. Is his egg undercooked or overcooked?

24. In an experiment to measure the lifetime of muons moving through the laboratory, scientists obtained an average value of 8 microseconds before a muon decayed into an electron and two neutrinos. If the muons were at rest in the laboratory, would they have a longer, a shorter, or the same average life? Why?