If you let a magnet free-fall down a copper or aluminum tube, the induced magnetic field in the surrounding conductive medium imposes a braking effect on the magnet, reducing its speed (explained by Lenz’s law).
The earth, being a large magnet, is essentially free-falling around the sun. The...
Doc Al,
Thanks again for your response, and putting up with my bull-headedness on this issue.
In an attempt to better understand where you're coming from, let me get your thoughts about THIS thought experiment:
M' is sitting in the exact middle of a long train, zooming along at...
Doc Al,
Thanks again for taking the time to comment.
I think I may be getting closer to articulating what's bugging me about this thought experiment.
First of all, we have to be careful to remember that this is ONLY a thought experiment (TE). To my knowledge, this specific experiment...
Doc Al,
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
Actually, he DOESN'T know this. ALL he knows, or all he can INFER is based on when the flashes of light reach him. And since he is sitting directly in the middle of a moving reference frame, in which BOTH wave-fronts are traveling towards him...
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I appreciate it.
I've got a question about your comment:
You say...
As I re-read Einstein's thought experiment, he seems to go to great pains to clarify that points A and B of the train coincide with points A and B of the embankment, such that when...
I’ve been trying to get my brain around Einstein’s theory of special relativity, and I find I'm a bit perplexed about his thought experiment (TE) involving the speeding train and the two simultaneous lightning strikes.
To briefly summarize, observer M is standing on a stationary “embankment”...
Hi,
I’ve got a general question about wave-particle duality, and the experiments done with slits.
When a laser is beamed through a small slit, we get a diffraction pattern. This pattern is interesting because it contains dark bands.
When it comes to explaining the existence of...