"Time dilation trip" Topic

So . . . did your dad ever take you on an odd vacation:

link

Next time you take your wife and your kids on a trip that involves a miniature convention remind them that it could be way weirder.

Homeland Security would have had a great time with them if they had been pulled over for any reason.

Hmmmm… now what's the science behind this, again?

Proof that nerds are not like you or I.

"Homeland Security would have had a great time with them if they had been pulled over for any reason."

My immediate thought as well. There is no way I would go near that empty running car with wires all over it.

Hmmmm… now what's the science behind this, again?

General Theory of Relativity. Time varies according to the observer's location within a gravity well, which affects clocks. The further away from the center of mass, the faster the clock measures time. The effect has been confirmed with rockets, but this is indeed an ingenious way to prove the principle on Earth.

Of course, at some point the kids are saying to each other, "You know, Dad's really weird…"

20 nanoseconds actually sounds like a lot for a van going 55-60 mph.

I wonder if he did a control experiment first with two stationary atomic clocks. I would bet that there are nanoseconds differences in trying to start two of these clocks simultaneously. How would you syncronise two clocks that finely?

Parzival you don't have it exactly right. Time slows as velocity increases. Therefore, the clock left at home was 20 nanoseconds slower than the trip clocks. Flying around the world in a supersonic jet takes about a second less than the stationary clock. That is why the astronauts traveling the speed of light in the SF books have years go by for them, but return to the earth 100s of years later.

That's why 20 nanoseconds from a Mini-Van sounds odd.

Ralph

Time dilation can be understood by imagining a graph with distance on one side and time on the other.

As you make your line steeper, meaning you are traveling through more distance more quickly you will see that time will start to decline.

So if you are traveling slowly, along the bottom of the graph then time will be flowing at what we consider to be a normal rate. But as you speed up your values for y become greater and time seems to be slowing.

The time change was not due to relative motion but the slight decrease in gravity on top of Mt Ranier.
I will keep this link for when I teach modern physics again.

Homeland Security would have had a great time with them if they had been pulled over for any reason.

Which highlights all of the many and varied problems with Homeland Security. "Looking suspicious" to someone too stupid to understand the experiment should not be a crime.

I think it sounds like a really cool vacation.
-Kle.

Parzival you don't have it exactly right. Time slows as velocity increases. Therefore, the clock left at home was 20 nanoseconds slower than the trip clocks. Flying around the world in a supersonic jet takes about a second less than the stationary clock. That is why the astronauts traveling the speed of light in the SF books have years go by for them, but return to the earth 100s of years later.

That's why 20 nanoseconds from a Mini-Van sounds odd.

No, I have the point of the experiment correct.

From the site: "In September 2005 the kids and I took several very accurate cesium atomic clocks from home and parked 5400 feet up Mt Rainier (the volcano near Seattle) for a full two days. The goal was to see if the clocks actually gained time, even if billionths of a second, as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity. Does gravity really alter time and can this weird phenomenon be detected with a family road trip experiment?"

The determining factor was the gravitational difference between the clocks left at home and the clocks kept at a higher altitude for a significant period. The speed of the van had nothing to do with it.

I think I get time dilation whenever is sit at the computer, I sit here for 5 mins then whoops two hours have gone

Mea culpas to both Parzival and Jlundgerg, who are correct. I skimmed when I should have read.

Castigated Ralph