How do I explain Einstein's theory of relativity to my 10 year old.?

Question

My Daughter asks short questions that involve long answers, and her latest was "When you are riding in a car, how come the telephone poles are moving slow when you look out the front window, and moving much faster when you look out the side window?"
The Answer is The theory of relativity, but I'm having trouble explaining it to her so she can understand it. Any Help?
Thanks,
Sparky.

Answer 1

This site is terrific for kids - Einstein section:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/
This is a bit long-winded, but a little more than halfway down are some good, basic explanations/examples of the T.O.R suitable for kids:
http://www.wesleyan.edu/synthesis/culture-cubed/haas/maintemp.htm

Answer 2

You have asked two questions here. You have incorrectly suggested that the answer to your second question is "The theory of relativity". Neither of Einstein's theories of relativity (General and Special) actually addresses the phenomenon that your daughter has observed (unless you are driving your car at speeds close to the speed of light!).

Perhaps the simplest explanation of the perception of distant objects moving more slowly than near objects is to take her to an airport to watch the planes taking off and landing, and then another day, or later that same day, ask her to find a plane hight in the sky. She should feel that the planes taking off and landing appear to be moving faster than the plan high in the sky. Tell her it is a trick of the mind, that infact the planes high in the sky are travelling even faster than they are when they take off or land.

Aren't children wonderful!

The answer to your posed question..."How do I explain........" is that there is no need to even try......when she becomes a Physics uni student, she can ask her professor.....I wonder what he will say???

Answer 3

relativity implies a relation to an object or location. when you move, you are moving with relation to the universe. an object cannot move faster than light 'in relation to the universe'. the observable universe is actually around 30 billion lightyears in diameter. 100-150 lightyears won't even get you to the center of the milky way. since the universe is not in relation to anything, it can expand faster than light. Space is expanding faster than light, not object moving through space faster than light. "well space is a vacuum, why should it matter?" you say. well space is not a true vacuum. it is filled with all sorts of strange particles and energy. It actually matters quite a bit. if it still confuses you, think of it as everything in the universe shrinking, while space remains the same. relative to all other objects, the shrinking object would appear to be moving away from everything else, because the space is increasing relative to the size of the object.

Answer 4

well when you are going down the highway you can see a longer distance so you think, when are we going to get to that telephone pole. But when you look out the side window the telephone pole is already there. You understand?

Answer 5

The first step to understanding this is explaining that space and time are warpable and not absolute. Gravity is the warping of spacetime. The more massive an object is, the more it will warp spacetime, sort of like how a fat person will cause a bed to warp when they sit down on it more then a skinny person would.

Answer 6

The further away the object is, the slower it appears to be travelling. The closer the object is the faster it appears to be going. Not sure if theory of relativity is the correct term for this. I'd say it is similar to the doppler affect only not with sound waves.

Answer 7

The theory of relativity, or simply relatiity, refers specifically to two theories: Albert Einstein's special relativity and general relativity.

The term "relativity" was coined by Max Planck in 1908 to emphasize how special relativity (and later, general relativity) uses the principle of relativity.

Albert Einstein's 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" introduced the special theory of relativity. Special relativity considers that observers in inertial reference frames, which are in uniform motion relative to one another, cannot perform any experiment to determine which one of them is "stationary". This is actually Galileo's principle of relativity; Einstein's contribution was to explicitly include electromagnetism within this principle, which required that the Galilean transformations be replaced by the Lorentz transformations. The resultant theory has many surprising consequences. In particular, it requires that the speed of light in a vacuum be the same for all these observers, regardless of their motion, or the motion of the source of the light, since the invariance of the speed of light is a consequence of Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism.

General relativity was developed by Einstein in the years 1907 - 1915. General relativity replaces the global Lorentz symmetry of special relativity with a local Lorentz symmetry in the presence of matter. The presence of matter "curves" spacetime, and this curvature affects the path of free particles (and even the path of light). General relativity uses the mathematics of differential geometry and tensors in order to describe gravitation as an effect of the geometry of spacetime. This theory is based on the general principle of relativity, which requires all observers to experience the same laws of physics, not just those moving with uniform speed, hence its name.

Answer 8

That isn't the theory of relativity! most Adults don't understand it so why should she. Objects in front are further away and take up less visual space than objects close to you.

Answer 9

When you are traveling fast and looking at the world as it looks to you up close (looking forward) everything seems to be more or less normal to you. But when you actually see how you are moving in relation to an object standing still (looking backward) they you realize that, in fact, you are moving so fast it is hard to even see.

Answer 10

Sparky, Einstein’s theory of relativity has nothing to do with the answer to the question of your 10yo daughter!! Don’t baffle your child!!!