Relativity visualized
Space Time Travel
|
Relativity visualized
Space Time Travel |
|
In his book "Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland" George Gamow describes the adventures of Mr. Tompkins in a fictitious world, in which the speed of light is only 30km/h. Motivated by the scene of Mr. Tompkins riding a bike along the street, the movies below show what a relativistically rolling wheel "really" looks like.
In his book "Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland" George Gamow describes the adventures of Mr. Tompkins in a fictitious world, in which the speed of light is only 30km/h. Motivated by the scene of Mr. Tompkins riding a bike along the street, the movies below show what a relativistically rolling wheel "really" looks like.
They are calculated with a four dimensional ray tracing method which takes into account the finite speed of light and the Lorentz contraction.
A more detailed explanation can be found in the (german) paper
See also the publications by Ute Kraus on this topic:
http://www.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de/~kraus/Rel/relV.html
The following MPEG movies show the same scene from three different viewing angles.
The red wheel in the background is at rest, the green one is in stationary rotation (a point on the rim moves with a speed of 0.93c) and the blue one in the foreground is rolling at a speed of 0.93c from left to the right through the scene.
The shadows are due to a light source which illuminates the scene from a great distance from behind and above.
|
Movie: Rolling wheel (0.93 c, right view)
The wheel is rolling towards the observer. MPEG1 320×240 (444 kB), MPEG1 640×480 (4.1 MB) |
|
Movie: Rolling wheel (0.93 c, front view)
The wheel is rolling from left to the right. MPEG1 320×240 (892 kB), MPEG1 640×480 (7.9 MB) |
|
Movie: Rolling wheel (0.93 c, left view)
The wheel is rolling away. MPEG1 320×240 (1.0 MB), MPEG1 640×480 (10.2 MB) |
|
Movie: Rolling wheel (0.93 c, rotation around vertical axis)
A wheel rotating around the vertical axis. MPEG1 320×240 (412 kB) |
Add to: 
Contact: Would you like to be notified of new contributions or to send us a message?
Survey: How do you use this site and how would you like it to develop?