Divisible By Pi

I just had my first tutorial on special relativity, and let me tell you — however you think you should visualize travelling close to the speed of light, you’re probably wrong (unless, of course, you’re a physicist). I say this as someone who has read plenty of popular books and watched plenty of videos explaining how to visualise relativistic motion.

The problem, as always seems to be the case in physics, is in the maths. Until you actually try and plug in the numbers and do the maths, you often won’t notice some of the apparent paradoxes that crop up in special relativity (often to do with simultaneity).

I’ll do an article on one of the tutorial questions later perhaps — if I have time, it’ll be up tomorrow. Until then, ponder this: What does it actually mean for one object to fit inside another?

Filed under: Physics, University