Physics education research, electronic materials, and the musings of Christopher Moore, Ph.D.
Physics education research, electronic materials, and the musings of Christopher Moore, Ph.D.
You are not logged in.
Interferometrics Cart
Imagine that a cart is mounted with two electric motors, connected each to a pulley. Between the pulleys is installed a belt of equidistant holes that always coincide at the same points in relation to the cart. This allows the passage of luminous flux.
This phenomenon is (nick)named the "Holemetrics Interference".
What comes into question now is ''the paradox of the cart to roll.''
Believing that the cart is stationary and its engines are fired, the belt will spin. According to the Theory of Relativity, the faster it moves, shorter the distance between their holes, because it will shrink.
The paradox begins when a person and the cart are set in motion with the same direction and speed. For its characteristic semicircular motion, one side of the belt will have its motion added to the cart, while the other will be subtracted. Event that would make one side of the belt to be larger than the other.
Thus, there is no difference if the speed is positive or negative. Remaining understand the interference pattern governed by the meeting of the belt's hole.
This phenomenon is evidenced by the standing waves, so named because they have their 'nodes' and 'antinodes' always occurring in the same places.
In the proposed system, this type of wave is possible because there is another part of the belt going and coming with the same characteristics. For the image shown below, one can clearly see the consequences of the interference generated by the superposition of these waves.
The green wave is heading towards the right. Imagine that the blue wave is the part that made the belt around the pulley and now back in the opposite direction on the left. The result of interference between two waves is given by the yellow wave.
The Standing Wave:
Animated Standing Wave Scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic73oZoq … r_embedded
Offline
To complete this stage of the mental exercise, take out the trolley system, stabilizing the two engines on the ground with a belt of the largest lenght as possible.
Because the holes match up the same points always, is possible to produce an instantaneous phenomenon along the belt, something not predicted by Einstein's Theory of Relativity. And so, the experiment "confirms" with the Newtonian idea that the time:
"Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably, without relation to anything external."
After being shown the possibility of coincidence in time and space from a purely mechanical system, the next step of this analysis is to replace the belt system pierced by a LASER gun and a mirror.
In this situation occurs the phenomenon of formation of standing waves, the interference of light waves that leave the laser gun and the waves reflected by the mirror.
We can be categorical in saying that, just as all the holes in the engine moving belt is coinciding at the same time, the variation of amplitude and phase of each antinode are in perfect synchronization at the entire path of the beam. This phenomenon can be used as a standard of simultaneity of time at any point of LASER path.
Offline
