The Strange World of Classical Physics

• Autores: David J. Green
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 48, Nº. 2, 2010, págs. 101-106
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • We have heard many times that the commonsense world of classical physics was shattered by Einsteins revelation of the laws of relativity. This is certainly true; the shift from our everyday notions of time and space to those revealed by relativity is one of the greatest stretches the mind can make. What is seldom appreciated is that the laws of classical physics yield equally strange or arguably even stranger results if the observer happens to be in a very high velocity reference frame. This article addresses two questions: In Part Iwe examine what the world would look like if relativity was not in effect and you happened to be in a reference frame traveling at a high percentage of the speed of light or faster than light perfectly allowable in this model, a conceptual world that existed on a foundation of Newtonian physics and the aether. It turns out that this is a weirder place than is generally realized. In Part IIwe see that classical physics in these frames is selfcontradictory. Neither the consideration of Maxwells equations nor the MichelsonMorley experiment is necessary to see these contradictions; they are implicit in the logic of the physics itself.