Person A is standing in a field, and person B is riding in a car that is moving with velocity (v). The person in the car shines a flashlight in the direction he or she is moving. Question: What speed of light will each person measure?
-
OK, if anything, the one thing you must come away with in physics is that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same everywhere... no matter what the source and observer are, or what they are doing.
So A could be whizzing around Saturn and still pick up the speed of light c ~ 300,000,000 mps and B could be at the North Pole and measure c ~ 300E6 mps as well.
That's the important physical observation that lead to the special theory of relativity. The STOR was published to explain how c is c is c no matter what. And the answer was that space and time adjusted to keep c at c. Space and time are variable, the speed of light is not.
So each person will measure the same speed, no matter what. And that's c (discounting the slight variation due to air as a medium).
So A could be whizzing around Saturn and still pick up the speed of light c ~ 300,000,000 mps and B could be at the North Pole and measure c ~ 300E6 mps as well.
That's the important physical observation that lead to the special theory of relativity. The STOR was published to explain how c is c is c no matter what. And the answer was that space and time adjusted to keep c at c. Space and time are variable, the speed of light is not.
So each person will measure the same speed, no matter what. And that's c (discounting the slight variation due to air as a medium).
-
http://answers.yahoo.com/quest…
Report Abuse
-
The speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames therefore they will both see the light travelling at about 3x10^8 m/s.