The Equation of special relativity This is a little complicated though not that difficult if you are curious to know about the theories of Einstein. So this all started of an imaginary clock known as the light clock. This consists of two mirrors placed parallel mirrors. A beam of light is shined and keeps on going up and down as shown in scenario 1. Now for example your friend 'a' is holding the light clock in the dark in front of you 'b'. Lets take the legnth between the two mirrors as 1 m. Thus the time take for the light to go from the 1st mirror to the 2nd is = 1/300000000= 3.3 nanoseconds. Let us draw this in the form of a triangle. So side b is 3.3cm(.now it is going to become a little complicated) But if 'b' starts moving with the light clock at half the speed of light. the light forms a zig-zag pattern as shown in scenario 2. Now 'b' is running at half the speed of light so his path will also be half the time taken by light while movi
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Deriving the E=mc²
Perhaps the most famous equation of all time is E = mc 2 . The equation is a direct result of the theory of special relativity, but what does it mean and how did Einstein find it? In short, the equation describes how energy and mass are related. Einstein used a brilliant thought experiment to arrive at this equation, which we will briefly review here. First of all, let us consider a particle of light, also known as a photon. One of the interesting properties of photons is that they have momentum and yet have no mass. This was established in the 1850s by James Clerk Maxwell. However, if we recall our basic physics, we know that momentum is made up of two components: mass and velocity. How can a photon have momentum and yet not have a mass? Einstein’s great insight was that the energy of a photon must be equivalent to a quantity of mass and hence could be related to the momentum. Einstein’s thought experiment runs as follows. First, imagine a stationary box f
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