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This question is somewhat stupid but it's intriguing me for a long time.

In this question, the man was moving with a speed of $10$ $cm/sec$ physically (with his foot) as seen from an observer at rest and for a moving observer the man moved with $20$ $cm/s$. But here the man didn't use his foot to travel the extra distance as if he did he would have fallen.

So can we use the same idea for photons ? So if photons have a speed of $3*10^8$ $m/s$ for a stationary observer, then for a moving observer it can have a greater speed but note that it is not physically moving with a greater speed (i.e the oscillation of charges are not physically changing anyhow), so it shouldn't violate the laws of physics too.

So why do we say that the speed of light is a constant for all the observers no matter with what speed they are moving ?

Ankit
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4 Answers4

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It would violate the laws of physics, because special relativity assumed that c is the same for any inertial observer. After assuming that you can obtain the velocity addition formula, which lets you relate the speed of an object in one reference frame with the speed of the same object on another that is moving relative to the first. The equations give you that for an object that is moving at c, moves at c on any other reference frame. Thus the postulate and the equations are all consistent.

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So why do we say that the speed of light is a constant for all the observers no matter with what speed they are moving ?

This is precisely the famous postulate of special relativity; It is the assumption upon which all the conclusions of special relativity are based and not an observation of SR.

As such, it is not based upon any other postulate or laws of physics. We say the speed of light is constant for all observers no matter what speed they're at because we've learned that it is consistent with all observations.

The way that makes intuitive sense to me: we know that waves travel at the speed of their medium. A sound wave travels at 340 m/s looks slower/faster to someone traveling 100 m/s through that medium. Photons don't really have a medium, or if they do its the EM field, so if you're traveling at 0.2 c then the EM field of all your atoms is also traveling 0.2c. Thus the "medium" through which the photons are traveling is moving with you. Again this is not a rigorous scientific explanation but more of an intuitive picture as to why photons are different from normal wave rules.

Señor O
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The invariance of the speed of light is implied by Maxwell's Equations. If one solves them for the vacuum solution, the speed of light is found to be \begin{eqnarray}c = \frac{1}{\sqrt{\epsilon_0\mu_0}}\end{eqnarray} It is also a mathematical fact that the equations of classical electromagnetism are Lorenz invariant, meaning that this result is the same for observers in all frames. The discovery and relevant physics of this fact is interesting, try looking into the Michelson-Morrely experiment and/or reading Feynman's Lectures Vol 2; particularly the chapter on relativistic electrodynamics.

The point is that no matter what inertial frame you use, the photon will always move at the same velocity. The difference between "physical" and "observed" motion becomes somewhat of a non-issue. Due to relativistic effects (length contraction and time dilation), the "physical" aspects of the wave would change for the moving observer to conserve the speed of light.

At the high school level, try looking at Minute Physics and their series on special relativity. It will sort out a whole bunch of your issues with this problem. The math behind the actual electromagnetism could be hairy at the high school level, but the big take away is that the entire theory of electromagnetism guarantees the invariance of the speed of light. Relativity tells you how things change to make that happen.

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I think a good way to answer this question is to present what is observed experimentally. This involves a careful statement of what we mean by "speed". So I will explain this by an extended example.

Suppose first of all that we collect or manufacture 200 steel rods, all the same length. Let them be 1 metre long for convenience. We can stack them on top of one another to be sure they are all the same length relative to one another when they are not moving relative to one another.

Next let's manufacture 4 clocks, all of the same design, and make it a robust design such as an electronic circuit based on a quartz crystal or something like that. We make sure these clocks agree with one another in the length of a second and a millisecond and a microsecond etc.

Now take 100 of the rods, and lay them end to end down the length of a corridor. We then say the corridor is 100 metres long. Or, more carefully, we say the "proper length" of the corridor is 100 metres. Also take two of the clocks and put one at each end of the corridor.

Next imagine a large space ship that can travel very fast. Take the remaining 100 rods and attach them to the space ship, laid end to end. Also furnish the space ship with two clocks. Finally, gently accelerate this space ship until it is travelling very fast relative to the corridor. Let's say that the speed of the space ship relative to the corridor is $v = c/2 \simeq 1.5 \times 10^8$ m/s.

Finally we do a simple experiment to measure the speed of light. We suppose a light pulse propagates down the corridor from one end to the other. In this experiment there are two events to think about: event $A$ as the light pulse leaves the first end, and event $B$ as it arrives at the other end. As far as observers at rest relative to the corridor are concerned, these events are separated by a distance of 100 metres. To measure the timing, we can use the clocks at each end, but we need to first synchronize them. This is done beforehand, by sending light pulses in both directions from the centre of the corridor and setting both clocks to zero when those pulses arrive.

In this experiment it is found that if the time at event A is zero then the time registered by the clock fixed to the corridor at event B is $0.33356$ micro-seconds. So we deduce that the speed of this light pulse relative to the corridor is $$ \frac{100\;{\rm m}}{0.33356 \times 10^{-6}\;{\rm s}} \simeq 3 \times 10^8\;{\rm m/s}. $$

Ok, now let's consider that same light pulse, but now observed from the space ship. To be precise, we imagine the space ship is zooming down the corridor at the same moment when the light pulse sets out, and we can imagine that the light pulse leaves burn marks on the set of rods fixed to the ship. Let's suppose it leaves one burn mark as it sets out, and another when it reaches the end of the corridor. We can arrange that the clocks in the space-ship are located at these two burn marks, and we can arrange for them to be synchronized for observers in the space-ship.

Now it is found in this experiment that the two burn-marks on the spaceship are separated by $57.735$ of the steel rods on the spaceship. And it is found that the clocks on the spaceship register a time difference of $0.1926$ microseconds between the two events. (I am not offering a proof, just a statement of what is in fact found in experiments like this one). So in view of these observations we say the speed of the pulse of light relative to the spaceship is $$ \frac{57.735\;{\rm m}}{0.1926 \times 10^{-6}\;{\rm s}} \simeq 3 \times 10^8\;{\rm m/s}. $$

In this example a single pulse of light was observed to travel between a single pair of events. The speed came out as the same $(3 \times 10^8$ m/s) when measured by two sets of observers who were themselves travelling at $c/2$ relative to one another.

Andrew Steane
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