Relativity. Will someone explain it to me?

Question

Alan Lightman (wrote the book Einstein's Dreams) came to my college and spoke on it at one time. It was very fascinating, but I will say I became lost. If you would rather not write out a big explanation, and have any good links connected to where I could learn more that would be great.

Answer 1

Here are a couple or sites on general and special relativity. You can also check out Einstein's publication 'The meaning of Relativity'. Its only like a 100 pages. I read it on one sitting back when I was in high school.

Answer 2

I will try to sum up what Einstein means and hopefully I can do it as accurately as possible. Basically what he was saying is that everything that is thought to move in the universe only moves in relation to something else. Speed can only truly be measured when you have a reference point to measure it against. For instance, your car moves 85mph compared to it's surrundings. The surrounding space is still relatively, but the car is the object that is moving in relation to the surrounding space. The galaxy we are in moves something like a million miles an hour in relation to the space surrounding it. His theory of relativity explains a whole lot of stuff that people before then were completely mystified on such as the nature of time and gravity. I appear to be butchering Einstein's principles so I will quit while I'm ahead. I hope this provided some minor explanation.

Answer 3

Relativity means that if you put 100 people observing the same experiment, everyone had different interpretations even if there is the same fact there, relativity means that mass can change with time and space, so on drop of something could produce something big, it transforms.

I will tell you what Einstein wrote when someone from one school asked him wha was relativity. He said something like this (using my words)

If you are with a nice lady you enjoy the time then time goes fast, you like this person. But if you are with a lady that you dont like the same amount of time FEELS longer you dont enjoy that convsersation with the lady.


Relativity has to do with feelings and perceptions, as C. Sagan wrote: Perception can fail...

Answer 4

Space is time, time is space. Spacetime is the field in which all phenomenon manifest. Spacetime is the absolute background against which all the phenomenon may be measured. All measurements are always relative to spacetime. For example, if there are two galactic travellers travelling in different directions at some velocities of their own, the velocity that is perceived by one traveller of the other traveller is the same and is relative to each other (each other's frame of reference, in this case being themselves and the other's spacecraft, alone in spacetime); to an observer in a neighbouring galaxy the two travellers will have different velocities. So which velocity is it then? No one answer. The velocity is relative to your frame of reference. But hold it, there's one traveller whose velocity is the same no matter what the frame of reference, and that traveller is Light, and a corollary of that is the equation of a mass' momentum's momentum as energy (of that mass, in that mass). E= mc2. (it's another matter that Light is the medium by which Einstein and we actually perceive Nature itself, let alone the differently moving spacecraft).

Answer 5

This is my version, Einstein would turn over in his grave......

Tempus Fugit.

‘Time, it is relevant’, or so Einstein said,
It came from a notion, somewhere in his head,
But Pad won’t believe it; maybe he’s wise,
He said ‘ Tempus Fugit’, or to you,‘ Time flies’.

Poor Einstein - his theory of relativity,
Was a sign, old Pad said, of naivety,
That theory is one thing that’s not in God’s plan
He’s said to have said, ‘ Time waits for no man’.

If Einstein were right, what would a man do?
But fly back a few years, then forwards a few,
His antics they would be just like a woman,
‘Till no one knew if, he was goin’ or comin’.

‘You would be able to see, if Einstein were right,
Next week’s news headlines, sometime tonight,
And last years potatoes, the ones that you ate,
Would not yet be planted, or gathered as yet’.

‘You could meet your own son when he’s ninety-one,
Then see your own father, when his life begun,
Then kiss your own mother when she was a girl,
Life, if he’s right, would be all in a whirl’.

‘So take my advice’, Old Pad, thinks he’s right,
‘That Einstein was clever, and yes, very bright’,
‘His theories’ says he, ‘they surely won’t last’,
‘What’s done, it is done, and what’s gone, is the past’.


------------------------