One morning I decided that I wanted to learn a new thing every day. So I decided to share my experience with everyone.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Faster than light

Today I answered a question that I asked myself a while ago. I was browsing though yahoo answer to find today’s subject when I stumble across this question:

Physics question?
When you're in a car and the driver brakes suddenly, why do you get flung forward?

The answer is obviously inertia. The car stop but your body continues to move forward due to inertia … and then I remembered a question that I asked a long time ago to one of my teacher. If your running a 5 km/h in a train going a 300 km/h from an outside perspective (someone watching you from outside the train) you will be running a 305 km/h. The question is, If I open a flash light in a train going a 300 km/h, will the light will goes a e+300km/h from an outside point of view ?

The answer to that, is probably that the light doesn’t have any inertia since its doesn’t have a mass. The speed will remain the same from the outside view, but should be a bit slower actually from the inside. Not noticeably of course, but if we take this to the extreme and we were in a train going at e (light speed) and we would light up a flash light, from the inside of the train, the light would appear to be still. Well if the light is still you wouldn’t see it because it wouldn’t reach your eye, but still … you get the point J


Most of the articles on these pages are taken from different site. Since I tend to strip the article to only keep the essential, I don’t use quote because it would (to keep it simple). Link to the used resources are kept in the link section. If you want to know the sources for any particular article, just ask the question in the comment form.