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In minutepysics, while explaning length contraction, it is stated that

If something moves while you are measuring its length, it does not represent its length

Question:

Why?

I, somewhat, know that "measuring the length of an object while moving" does not work from this question, but I cannot understand why that is the case; after all, we do a lot of length measurements by lasers, by which we use the time difference between laser beams arriving at different times.

Qmechanic
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1 Answers1

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If something moves while you are measuring its length, it does not represent its length.

I think this is not strictly correct. When measuring the lenght of a moving object, the result is the contracted length as a consequence of Relativity. I think it means that if something moves while you are measuring its length, it does not represent its proper length (length at rest). As you may know, the proper length is a relativistic invariant quantity.

falgenint
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