Ok, ususally I wouldn't do this. But I'm bored and you just hit the geek button. One thing to clear up first, you don't know me. I saw your post on Rob's blog (I don't even know if you know HIM, but you posted) and out of curosity checked out of your blog.
So here goes. I will be describing General Relativity, Special Relativity is more or less the same as General Relativity except that it does not consider gravatational effects, such as the bending of space and time.
So here's the dillio, let's say you're playing ping pong (or beer pong if you prefer...just not Beirut) on a train (why? BECAUSE! That's why). The train is going along at 90mph. A ping pong ball bounces straight up and down hitting the table on the same spot exactly one second apart.
To you, the ball didn't move at all except for up and down. But to someone on the tracks the bounces seemed to take place about 40m apart. (If my math holds up). In any case you percieve the same event differently even though you both watched the exact same thing. But your positions 'relative' (see how that word fits in there) to one another differ.
Basically at the end of the day, the theory just says that you can't talk about velocities, acceleration, time, etc. without a defined frame of reference.
Does that help? I hope so, I would hate to have read 'A Breif History of Time' by Stephen Hawking and nothing good came from it. - Scott
P.S. I'm really not this geeky...don't tell anyone ;)
1 comment:
Ok, ususally I wouldn't do this. But I'm bored and you just hit the geek button. One thing to clear up first, you don't know me. I saw your post on Rob's blog (I don't even know if you know HIM, but you posted) and out of curosity checked out of your blog.
So here goes. I will be describing General Relativity, Special Relativity is more or less the same as General Relativity except that it does not consider gravatational effects, such as the bending of space and time.
So here's the dillio, let's say you're playing ping pong (or beer pong if you prefer...just not Beirut) on a train (why? BECAUSE! That's why). The train is going along at 90mph. A ping pong ball bounces straight up and down hitting the table on the same spot exactly one second apart.
To you, the ball didn't move at all except for up and down. But to someone on the tracks the bounces seemed to take place about 40m apart. (If my math holds up). In any case you percieve the same event differently even though you both watched the exact same thing. But your positions 'relative' (see how that word fits in there) to one another differ.
Basically at the end of the day, the theory just says that you can't talk about velocities, acceleration, time, etc. without a defined frame of reference.
Does that help? I hope so, I would hate to have read 'A Breif History of Time' by Stephen Hawking and nothing good came from it. - Scott
P.S. I'm really not this geeky...don't tell anyone ;)
http://gmoneydopefly.blogspot.com
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