Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 5:28 am Post subject: Modern Times
1. What was Einstein’s insight about light and what role did the Michaelson-Morley experiment play?
Einstein looked into “what would happen if you could ride alongside a beam of light, at the same speed the light was moving”. He realized that if you were moving at the same speed as the light, it wouldn’t be waving, and instead remain stationary. A stationary magnetic field doesn’t make an electric field. It is therefore “impossible to run alongside a beam of light at the same speed the light is moving… no matter how close you get, when you measure the speed of the light beam itself you will always get the answer c”. He also found that our 3-D world is a shadow from a 4-D spacetime. He said that muons are moving so fast relative to the Earth, that time is running more slowly for them. Time stands still for an object moving at the speed of light. For a photon, everything else is rushing past at the speed of light. He said that either light was a wave, or it was a particle. The Michaelson-Morley experiment made these theories possible to test because they developed a way to tell how long light spent on its journey bouncing off of reflections.
2. Did this insight change the discipline of science? How?
I don’t know if I would say this insight changed the discipline of science. It was a huge discovery, for sure, and prompted many many more studies and questioning and fields of experimentation, but I don’t know that it directly influenced the discipline of science.
Okay, so I'm sorry if i"m just asking a lot of stupid questions, but I'm really confused, or maybe mystified is a better word, because I think this stuff is really cool, it's just so over my head, by this whole speed of light thing. How do you measure the speed of light? It was thought that ether was the stuff that light was moving through, but if ether doesn't exist, than what does light travel through, and how do we know how fast it's moving? I have no idea, and maybe this is the beginning of a whole bunch of unanswerable questions, but I was just curious.
Anyway, so Einstein. Pretty cool guy, who was thinking about what would happen if we could move as fast as light. If we're thinking of light as a wave though, and that wave is moving, if we catch up to it, it won't in motion anymore, at least not from our perspective. It'll look like it's standing still. And so, it's impossible to move as fast as light waves.
Now that Einstein was making these theories, we needed a way to try them out, which was where Michaelson and Morley came in. They used reflective surfaces to watch the light travel, and then measured how long the light took to bounce off the reflection.
I'm not sure if I would say that this changed the discipline of science. We've talked about a discipline before, saying that it's the thinking applied to a certain subject. To say that these experiments changed the discipline of science would mean that they were so groundbreaking that they would have changed the way that science is done, and I don't think that they changed the discipline.
Thanks. Sorry for that little rant at the beginning there.
mmmm. so, bad post-er I am and all, I can't handle synthesizing my thoughts about the reading with anything anyone else has said because my brain might break. sorry guys.
in terms of the first question, this is all I have:
Michelson-Morely ---> earth/light does not move relative to (speed of) ether.
Einstein---> if you watched the wave of light at its own speed, it wouldn't be a wave at all, but stationary.
that said, I'M PROBABLY TOTALLY WRONG.
In terms of the second question, allow me to potentially transgress to microhistory. Microhistory seems particularly relevant to this branch in science, I'm just not sure how yet. Because all through out this reading, from the HUGE concepts of spacetime to the TINY concepts of quantum land, everything seems to reflect itself. Sorry this is so vague, but, heres my point: I can't tell if, if there was such a discipline as microscience, and it followed the same rules as the discipline of microhistory does, whether microscientists would say "this (what einstein said about light/motion) is TRUTH" or whether they would say "THIS IS A LIE!" Either take seems justifiable in the eyes of a micro...person.
Because of that, I think that Einstein may have changed the discipline of Science by creating science's own... microdiscipline. If in fact, quantum stuff is the stuff microscientists would be into. I feel like a microhistorian might know...
sorry I can't be more productive or helpful with the concrete science.
I think theres an interesting gedanken there, though, if anyone cares to indulge me.
I understood the first section of the reading, but once it got to Einstein this reading COMPLETELY lost me.
Here's some questions I have, which might help me understand the reading:
-Fitzgerald believed the experiment didn't capture the change of the speed of light possibly "because the entire experimental apparatus (and, indeed, the Earth itself) shrinks in the direction of motion?" (pg 115)
What does he mean by "shrink"?
-on pg 117, bottom paragraph (left hand side) "the speed of one spacecraft to the other one must be 1.5c, but according to the Lorentz transformations.... either spaceship will measure the speed... as c, not 1.75c." How do they get to these numbers?
- I was also really confused about the "other side of the light barrier". Can someone explain this to me?
1. What was Einstein’s insight about light and what role did the Michaelson-Morley experiment play?
Einstein wanted to know what would happen if you could move with a beam of light at the same speed it was moving. This intruiged him because, according to maxwell, "If you were moving at the same speed as the wave, it wouldn not be 'waving, from your point of view...there would simply be no wave at all-not even a frozen one" (pg 116) This brought about his theory of relativity--that all motion is relative.
muons are "cosmic rays...when these particles interact with atoms hight in the atmosphere, they often produce showers of anther kind of particle [muons]." Muons live for only a few microseconds, and in 'earth time' they would not last long enough to make it to the ground. But they do, and this is because time runs slower for them. "they live 9 times longer, according to our clocks." for photons, everything around it rushes past at the speed of light. Without the knowledge of how long it takes light to travel (Which Michaelson and Morely figured out using reflections) Einstein would not have been able to test or prove his theories.
2. Did this insight change the discipline of science? How?
I believe relativity changed the discipline. If your studying science thinking that motion and time is the same for everyone and then you find out its relative, that changes the way you have to think about thing, conduct experiments. There are a lot more factors to consider and the whole thing becomes a whole lot more complicated and harder to figure out.
First off, the idea of Ether just boggles my mind. From what I have gathered it seems like people just thought it existed because they needed a placeholder to explain how things worked. Also how did people explain its existence if its entire existence seems impossible (maybe just to me) When people breathed did they think they were breathing a mixture of ether and air? Maybe I just can't look at it from the same point of view that people back then looked at it from.
1.
Einstein figured out that if you were moving along side a wave of light at the same speed it was going, it would appear to be stationary and not waving at all. The Michelson-Morley experiments made it possible to test and prove these theories.
2.
I think these discoveries had a huge impact on science, but I do not think that they necessarily changed the way people practiced Science. If anything I would say it changed the way people thought about practicing Science... I don't really know.
1. What was Einstein’s insight about light and what role did the Michaelson-Morley experiment play?
Einstein's insight on light was that it moves in particles, not in waves, which it had been said to have moved in by Young, and Maxwell, but Einstein also talked alot about the speed of light, and his theory of relativity. Einstein thought that "There does not have to be a standard of rest in the Universe against which all velocities are measured. Instead, he said that all motion is relative - which means that anybody is entitled to say that they are at rest and to measure all motion relative to themselves." which is basically saying that things look like they are moving around you, if you move, and you know that expression, "The world doesn't revolve around you" ? IT'S WRONG! haha! and that things will be the same no matter 3where you are when you see them. He talked about how the speed of light always = c, and how time travel is possible, and time should eb regarded as a 4th dimension. He had alot of pretty cool ideas, and I like how when I read about this light stuff I can imagine it in my head because it's talking about expiriments and the like instead of ideas, and I can picture experiments better.
He also talked about Tachyons and "tardons," and I thought that part was really funny, but I told Anna the joke and she didn't think that it was meant to be a joke, so if someone could please back me up on this? that tardons is a funny way to call everything slower than the speed of light, because tardy means late?
**tachyons also brings up the concept of a parallel universe, which in this case is a mirror image? why did thy call it all particles?
Q: what is a quanta? please explain! I don't understand it.
2. Did this insight change the discipline of science? How?
no... I don't think it did... except maybe that we can't assume anything is right, or true because the only thing that lets us be able to know (and observe) is sight... so if what we see is only refracted light then what do we really "know" about the world around us? eh? eh?
other than that I don't think that it changed the discipline.
first of all, lemme just say that after several weeks of confusing philosophy and history and such, its actually a refresher to get a confusing SCIENCE reading instead. its so goddamn cool!
1. Sasha said essentially the same thing im about to, but it was the basis of what einstein was thinking. when i saw that michaelson and morley had actually gotten a NUMBER for the speed of light, a number for c, then it was possible that centuries in the future humans could make something that could match or even surpass the speed of light. but einstein shut that thought down efficiently by saying that if you were going the same speed as light, then theres no relative motion, and without relative motion, theres no magnetic/electric field, therefore its impossible. thank you maxwell, otherwise einstein would have no other theory to fall back on. as for the role michaelson and morley's experiment played, it served as a wake up call to the people who still believed in this magical stuff called ether. if the experiment was never performed, then the theory of ether would still be applicable to light, and einstein's special theory of relativity would not be the definitive way we look at the speed of light/relativity/motion.
2. This insight.....was a fantastic discovery, one that sparked a zillion experiments and raised more questions for future scientists. but im not sure it affected science as a discipline. so if i HAD to say, then no, the insight did NOT change science as a discipline. however, i really hope that im wrong, because this discovery seems too important NOT to affect science as a discipline.
now ill go to bed with my brain aflame. goodnight.
As said in the text, Einstein "puzzled over what would happen if you could ride alongside a beam of light, at the same speed the light was moving." He concluded that no one can match the speed of light. The text does say "the special theory of relativity tells us that it is impossible to run alongside a beam of light at the same speed as the light is moving; relative to some chosen inertial frame, you can in principle get your own velocity up as close to the speed of light as you like without actually reaching it - but no matter how close you get, when you measure the speed of light beam itself you will always get the answer c." (p. 117).
One massive run-on sentence describes Einstein's insight on light (ha rhyme). Also, E = MC^2. We'll talk about that more with atom bombs. The Michaelson-Morley experiment determined, as quoted in the text, that "the speed of light is exactly the same, whichever way it is moving relative to the Earth" (p. 115). Einstein's theory of relativity expounded upon their finding. Since Einstein worked at a patent office and he read a variety of papers, I wonder if he read Michaelson's and Morley's idea of the light. That would be interesting to see such a coincidental connection.
Regarding how this insight changes the discipline of science, it doesn't. Regarding my definition, science is the study to come as close to the truth of why the world behaves as it does by the use of observation and experimentation. Though Einstein did not experiment, he did use his remarkable ability to observe and calculate these magnificent discoveries. Yet this insight definitely changed the world in other ways. We'll read about that within the next few days. Good night everyone!
wow cool reading. Michelson and Morley basically send the idea of ether on its way, although it still exists in other ways today. They essentially accomplish this by proving with a fairly simple yet intricate experiment, that light moving against the rotation of the earth moves no faster than light moving with the rotation. this implies that light isn't relative to ether or rather that ether must not exist at all. einstein comes along and to a certain extent sets the speed of light as a standard of relativity as it pertains to time. he says that distances shrink and time expands relative to you as you approach the speed of light. he also gives every object the right to claim to be standing still, which is to say that there is no objective reasoning which claims that i am moving through space to you anymore than you are moving though space to me.
the idea of relativity in the broadest sense of the world is paramount to science and philosophy. the study of light dominates the field of physics because of its seeming pervasiveness and thus the way we study light can be used as a reference to the way we study in general. Now Kant says that a priori which is at least in part, an innate sense of space and time, is the way in which we study. Now einstein moves around the pieces of that framework, and in doing so seems to get to the core of things as they pertain to human perception, more than any other scientist to date. This is why einstein is so profoundly uncomfortable, because he is meddling in our a priori and really rocking our world. yeah he changed science perhaps by making a paradigm shift, a paradigm leap from the study of the empirical as it relates to space and time, to the study of space and time as it relates to the empirical. this is fundamentally in a lot of ways hegelian. what does light have to do with all of this? well hegel was a philosopher, he interprets light as another word for truth. Einstein was a scientist. This is a perfect manifestation of how ideas of relationships can be carried between history science philosophy and anything else you can come up with...
Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 9:15 am Post subject: GWAHAHGGHRJKJDFIBLAAAAGGGHh (jaw drops to floor)
I think so far out of all the readings this has challenged me the most. I spent a lot of time just trying to understand what Einstein meant (or just the author) when he reffered to inertial observers and their connection to the speed of light. I hope to keep my answers basic enough to even be understood:
1.what was Einsten's insight about light and what role did teh Michaelson-Morley experiment play?
I recognize that Einstein's big thoughts into relativity of light scene was that nothing could go faster than it, "relative to some chosen inertial frame" that is the part I don't understand. Is this chosen frame the speed to which we are comparing? I think it is so I'm gonna keep on going like that. Einstein thought of the speed of light as something that could never be matched, but something could keep on gradually gaining on it's speed. Michaelson-Morley helped out by finding that the ether theory did not work when their was one set speed for light. This set in motion Einsteins crazy brain sprintage about the relativity of motion and teh speed of light.
2. Did this insight change the discipline of science? How?
Hellllsss Yes it did. Einsteins discovery was on only a small part of science put together, but his discovery was able to branch out other portions of science. People began to think differently about space and time altogether. Physics and gained a whole new level of quantum theory onto the physics scene. Ether was no longer part of the picture while it had been for a very long time!
Einstein’s insight
(skip this next paragraph, if you're skimming)
I’m gonna try and tackle special relativity and how it applies to science, and I’m hoping my babbling will get me somewhere on the light track (harhahar) or illuminate some answers...ehem…so people believed previous to Einstein that the earth moved relative to ether; the michaelson-morley experiment disestablished this and proved that “the speed of light is exactly the same, whichever way it is moving relative to the earth (pg 115)”. The experiments showed that the earth was stationary in relationship to the ether, but they knew the earth wasn’t stationary so they were like waitaminute what is going on? Then Einstein was like actually the idea of ether just isn’t true, in fact we can’t measure things in relation to each other at all, we “Einstein saw that there is no need to invoke a preferred frame of reference at all. There does not have to be a standard of rest in the Universe against which all velocities are measured. Instead, he said that all motion is relative, which means to say that anybody is entitled to say that they are at rest, and to measure all motions relative to themselves.(116)”
****As it relates to light, he believed that NO MATERIAL OBJECT/NOTHING THAT OCCUPIES SPACE AND TIME CAN MOVE AT OR FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT
So I’m SURE that Einstein was revolutionary to science, and I can’t quite figure out how
From what I understand (which is actually not much), he turned a priori concepts of space and time on their heads by introducing the notion that light kind light transcends both. But he also totally brought out new a priori concepts and steered science in a director where we legit can figure things out because matter, according to Einstein, operates by the same underlying rules, by our perspective changes. I may have just made that up.
“The Lorentz transformations tell us that time stands still for an object moving at the speed of light…you can either say that time does not exist for an electromagnetic wave, so that it is everywhere along its path (everywhere in the universe) at once; or you can say that distance does not exist for an electromagnetic wave, so that it touches everything in the universe at once. pg118”
you know when you have those moments when your brain flashes outside the realm of what its normally capable of? everything before newton led up to newton and everything after him was based of of him, until einstein. einstein lived in that moment where most people can only venture for split seconds if they're lucky. not only was he able to reside there long enough to establish a fundamental understanding, but he was able to shift science from the principles of this understanding almost as if he had come back from another world and shared his insight. but again i think he stated about light what hegel had stated about truth insofar as it is the bond and the codependency between a priori and empirical.
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