Explain relativity.?

Question

For a very inquisitive six-year-old.

Answer 1

General or special relativity?

For a 6-year-old...hmmm. Try this:

Relativity explains why we see things differently depending on where we are. For example, a train whistle will sound different depending on whether the train is moving towards you or away from you.

If she's a bright kid:

If you have two loud noises that happen at exactly the same time a mile apart and we both stand next to one, I would think the one near me happened first, because it takes longer for the sound from yours to reach me, but you would think yours happened first for the same reason.

If she's REALLY bright, you could add..
When you go really fast, time actually slows down. We can't go fast enough in a car to notice it, but if another little girl was on a spaceship going really fast while you were here on Earth, in 20 years she might still be a little girl while you're all grown up, because time would be moving more slowly for her.

That might be too much for a 6-year-old, though.

Answer 2

I would tell the child something like this. (It's about the same explanation I gave my 8-year-old.)

In 1886 scientists discovered that everyone measures the speed of light in empty space to be the same thing, no matter how the observer is moving and no matter how the light source is moving. This is different from our ordinary experience with people walking on moving trains.

Einstein said that since this is a fact, a clock that used light beams to tick would slow down if it's set in motion, relative to a stationary observer. (I really need a blackboard to show why.) And if a light-beam clock slows down, then any other kind of clock would slow down also. We can't notice this slowing at ordinary speeds but it becomes important when things move fast, and very important when they move near the speed of light.

Moving objects also get heavier the faster they move (for a 6-year-old I would leave out the difference between weight and mass), and the closer to the speed of light they go, the heavier they get, until at the speed of light they would be so heavy that they couldn't go any faster.

Answer 3

An inquisitive 6 year old? Impressive. ok here goes.

There are two important changes about our physical laws when we talk about relativity. Both involve looking at things as they approach close to the speed of light which travels 300 million metres every second! (very fast indeed!)

These are, time dilation and lorentz conraction:

time dilation: time appears to slow down for a object (or person) moving at close to this speed

lorentz contraction: as you get close to the speed of light, your size begins to shrink, until you become a single point!

IMPORTANT: It is impossible for any object with a mass to reach the speed of light!

Answer 4

In a nutshell, it is that distance, mass, and time change depending on the observer, which is to say that distance, mass and time are relative to the observer. But the one thing they will all have in common, no matter what their location of how fast they are moving, is that they will all measure the speed of light to be exactly the same value. In fact, distance, mass and time HAVE to change in order for light to always measure the same, and this amazing theory has been supported by the results thousands of experiments.

As mentioned above, time dilation and Lorentz contraction are 2 results of this truth.

Answer 5

Assuming she is not refering to relatives such as parents:
If you are sitting in a car that is stationary and the car beside you begins to move, for a moment it is hard to decide who in fact is moving. You are both moving relative to each other but only the other car is moving relative to the road.
Einstein asked 'what would the world look like if we could travel on a light beam?'. Because light travels so fast,if we travelled on a light beam then the world around us would appear to stand still, in effect time would stop moving for the world around us whilst staying as normal for the traveller. For the observer looking at the traveller, the opposite would happen.
Unfortunately we cannot travel at such speeds as einsteins mass/energy relationship hypothesises that it is impossible however, even at speeds approaching the speed of light time would move differently for the traveller and the observer.

Answer 6

Time goes slower at lower gravitational potentials. This is called gravitational time dilation.
Orbits precess in a way unexpected in Newton's theory of gravity. (This has been observed in the orbit of Mercury and in binary pulsars).
Even rays of light (which are weightless) bend in the presence of a gravitational field.
The Universe is expanding, and the far parts of it are moving away from us faster than the speed of light.
Frame-dragging, in which a rotating mass "drags along" the space time around it.
Technically, general relativity is a metric theory of gravitation whose defining feature is its use of the Einstein field equations. The solutions of the field equations are metric tensors which define the topology of the spacetime and how objects move intertially.

Answer 7

I agree with scouser! It would be impossible for a six year old to be taught it and understand. Why don't you say something like,

"We don't know everything yet. It is difficult to describe. Maybe one day you can figure it all out for us!"

Or you could say...

"If you can go really, really, super-duper fast (speed of light). then you start to get heavier because you can't get any faster than the speed of light! It's really weird!"

GOOD LUCK!

Answer 8

It's a word some one thought of, gave it an indefinite description, to make the human race think, try to prove something, that is just a theory.

It's just to make us ponder, the way things work, to give our brains an exercise without finding the truth.

Answer 9

Basically...., if you throw a teddy bear out of a third-floor window... you will never be able to run down the stairs fast enough to catch it before it hits the ground....

Answer 10

everything is relative. Not everyone is a relative. That should please a 6 year old!