Ladder paradox 1

Ladder paradox
The ladder paradox (or barn-pole paradox) is a thought experiment in special relativity. It involves a ladder
travelling horizontally and undergoing a length contraction, the result of which being that it can fit into a much
smaller garage. On the other hand, from the point of view of an observer moving with the ladder, it is the garage that
is moving and the garage will be contracted to an even smaller size, therefore being unable to contain the ladder at
all. This apparent paradox results from the assumption of absolute simultaneity. In relativity, simultaneity is relative
to each observer and thus the ladder can fit into the garage in both instances.

Paradox
The problem starts with a ladder and an
accompanying garage that is too small to contain
the ladder. Through the relativistic effect of length
contraction, the ladder can be made to fit into the
garage by running it into the garage at a high
enough speed.

Figure 1: An overview of the garage and the ladder at rest

However, both the ladder and garage occupy their own inertial reference
frames, and thus both frames are equally valid frames to view the problem.
From the reference frame of the garage, it is the ladder that moves with a
relative velocity and so it is the ladder that undergoes length contraction.
Conversely, through symmetry, from the reference frame of the ladder it is
the garage that is moving with a relative velocity and so it is the garage that
undergoes a length contraction. From this perspective, the garage is made
even smaller and it is impossible to fit the ladder into the garage.
Figure 2: In the garage frame, the ladder
undergoes length contraction and will
therefore fit into the garage.

Figure 3: In the ladder frame, the garage

undergoes length contraction and seems
too small to contain the ladder.
Ladder paradox 2

Relative simultaneity
The solution to the apparent paradox lies in the fact that what
one observer (e.g. the garage) considers as simultaneous does
not correspond to what the other observer (e.g. the ladder)
considers as simultaneous (relative simultaneity). A clear way
of seeing this is to consider a garage with two doors that swing
shut to contain the ladder and then open again to let the ladder
out the other side.

From the perspective of the ladder, the back door (right) closes
and opens, then after the garage passes over the ladder, the
front door (left) closes and opens.
The situation is illustrated in the Minkowski diagram below.
The diagram is in the rest frame of the garage. The vertical
light-blue-shaded band shows the garage in space-time, the
light-red band shows the ladder in space-time. The x and t axes
are the garage space and time axes, respectively, and x′ and t′
are the ladder space and time axes, respectively. The ladder is
moving at a velocity of in the positive x

direction, therefore . (From the ladder's point of

view, its speed in the x′ direction is the same.)

Figure 4: Scenario in the garage frame: a length contracted

ladder entering and exiting the garage
Ladder paradox 3

Figure 5: Scenario in the ladder frame: a length

contracted garage passing over the ladder

Since light travels at very close to one foot per nanosecond, let’s work in these units, so that . The
garage is a small one, G=10 feet long, while in the ladder frame, the ladder is L=12 feet long. In the garage frame,
the front of the ladder will hit the back of the garage at time (if is chosen
as the reference point). This is shown as event A on the diagram. All lines parallel to the garage x axis will be
simultaneous according to the garage observer, so the dark blue line AB will be what the garage observer sees as the
ladder at the time of event A. The ladder is contained inside the garage. However, from the point of view of the
observer on the ladder, the dark red line AC is what the ladder observer sees as the ladder. The back of the ladder is
outside the garage.
Ladder paradox 4

Figure 6: A Minkowski diagram of ladder paradox. The garage is shown in light blue, the
ladder in light red. The diagram is in the rest frame of the garage, with x and t being the
garage space and time axes, respectively. The ladder frame is for a person sitting on the
front of the ladder, with x′ and t′ being the ladder space and time axes respectively. The x
and x′ axes are each 5 feet (1.5 m) long in their respective frames, and the t and t′ axes are
each 5 ns in duration.

Resolution
In the context of the paradox, when the ladder enters the garage and is
contained within it, it must either continue out the back or come to a complete
stop. When the ladder comes to a complete stop, it accelerates into the
reference frame of the garage. From the reference frame of the garage, all parts
of the ladder come to a complete stop simultaneously, and thus all parts must
accelerate simultaneously.

Figure 7: A ladder contracting under From the reference frame of the ladder, it is the garage that is moving, and so in
acceleration to fit into a length order to be stopped with respect to the garage, the ladder must accelerate into
contracted garage the reference frame of the garage. All parts of the ladder cannot accelerate
simultaneously because of relative simultaneity. What happens is that each part
of the ladder accelerates sequentially, front to back, until finally the back end of the ladder accelerates when it is
within the garage, the result of which is that, from the reference frame of the ladder, the front parts undergo length
contraction sequentially until the entire ladder fits into the garage.
Ladder paradox 5

Figure 8: A Minkowski diagram of the case

where the ladder is stopped all along its length,
simultaneously in the garage frame. When this
occurs, the garage frame sees the ladder as AB,
but the ladder frame sees the ladder as AC. When
the back of the ladder enters the garage at point
D, it has not yet felt the effects of the acceleration
of its front end. At this time, according to
someone at rest with respect to the back of the
ladder, the front of the ladder will be at point E
and will see the ladder as DE. It is seen that this
length in the ladder frame is not the same as CA,
the rest length of the ladder before the
deceleration.
Ladder paradox 6

Ladder paradox and transmission of force

What if the back door (the door the ladder exits out of) is closed
permanently and does not open? Suppose that the door is so solid that
the ladder will not penetrate it when it collides, so it must stop. Then,
as in the scenario described above, in the frame of the reference of the
garage, there is a moment when the ladder is completely within the
garage (i.e. the back of the ladder is inside the front door), before it
collides with the back door and stops. However, from the frame of
reference of the ladder, the ladder is too big to fit in the garage, so by
the time it collides with the back door and stops, the back of the ladder
still hasn't reached the front door. This seems to be a paradox. The
question is, does the back of the ladder cross the front door or not?
The difficulty arises mostly from the assumption that the ladder is rigid Figure 1: A Minkowski diagram of the case
(i.e. maintains the same shape). Ladders seem pretty rigid in everyday where the ladder is stopped by impact with the
back wall of the garage. The impact is event A.
life. But being rigid requires that it can transfer force at infinite speed
At impact, the garage frame sees the ladder as
(i.e. when you push one end the other end must react immediately, AB, but the ladder frame sees the ladder as AC.
otherwise the ladder will deform). This contradicts special relativity, The ladder does not move out of the garage, so its
which states that information can only travel at most the speed of light front end now goes directly upward, through
point E. The back of the ladder will not change its
(which is pretty fast for us to notice in real life, but is significant in the
trajectory in space-time until it feels the effects of
ladder scenario). So objects cannot be perfectly rigid under special the impact. The effect of the impact can
relativity. propagate outward from A no faster than the
speed of light, so the back of the ladder will never
In this case, by the time the front of the ladder collides with the back
feel the effects of the impact until point F or later,
door, the back of the ladder doesn't know it yet, so it keeps moving at which time the ladder is well within the garage
forwards (and the ladder kind of "compresses"). In both the frame of in both frames. Note that when the diagram is
the garage and the inertial frame of the ladder, the back end keeps drawn in the frame of the ladder, the speed of
light is the same, but the ladder is longer, so it
moving at the time of the collision, until at least the point where the
takes more time for the force to reach the back
back of the ladder comes into the light cone of the collision (i.e. a point end; this gives enough time for the back of the
where force moving backwards at the speed of light from the point of ladder to move inside the garage.
the collision will reach it). At this point the ladder is actually shorter
than the original contracted length, so the back end is well inside the garage. Calculations in both frames of reference
will show this to be the case.
What happens after the force reaches the back of the ladder (the "green" zone in the diagram) is not specified.
Depending on the physics, the ladder could break into a million pieces; or, if it were sufficiently elastic, it could
re-expand to its original length and push the back end out of the garage.
Ladder paradox 7

Man falling into grate variation

This paradox was originally proposed and solved
by Wolfgang Rindler ("Length Contraction
Paradox": Am. J. Phys., 29(6) June 1961) and
involved a fast walking man, represented by a rod,
falling into a grate. It is assumed that the rod is
entirely over the grate before the downward
acceleration begins. The downward acceleration is
simultaneous (in the grate frame of reference) and
equally applied to each point in the rod.

From the perspective of the grate, the rod

undergoes a length contraction and fits into the
grate. However, from the perspective of the rod, it
is the grate undergoing a length contraction,
through which it seems the rod is then too small to
fall.

In fact, the downward acceleration of the rod,

which is simultaneous in the grate's frame of
reference, is not simultaneous in the rod's frame of
reference. In the rod's frame of reference, the front
of the rod is first accelerated downward, and as
time goes by, more and more of the rod is
subjected to the downward acceleration, until
A man (represented by a segmented rod) falling into a grate
finally the back of the rod is accelerated
downward. This results in a bending of the rod in
the rod's frame of reference. It should be stressed that, since this bending occurs in the rod's rest frame, it is a true
physical distortion of the rod which will cause stresses to occur in the rod.

Recent criticism
However, the above "man falling into grate" solution has recently been criticised in an article by Van Lintel and
Gruber in the Eur.J.Phys.26 (Jan. 2005), p.19: The earlier solution is interpreted to imply that proper stiffness could
be affected by relative speed. The more recent solution is that the rod's (unaffected) proper stiffness is related to the
thickness of the rod, which thickness implies a time delay before any part of the upper surface of the rod can start
falling. In this particular case, the rod will even arrive at the other side of the hole before any part of the upper
surface "feels" the effect of the hole.
Ladder paradox 8

Bar and ring paradox

The above paradox is complicated: It
involves non-inertial frames of
reference since at one moment the man
is walking horizontally, and a moment
later he is falling downward. It
involves a physical deformation of the
man (or segmented rod), since the rod
is bent in one frame of reference and
straight in another. These aspects of
the problem introduce complications The diagram on the left illustrates a bar and a ring in the rest frame of the ring at the
involving the stiffness of the bar which instant that their centers coincide. The bar is Lorentz-contracted and moving upward and
tends to obscure the real nature of the to the right while the ring is stationary and uncontracted. The diagram on the right
illustrates the situation at the same instant, but in the rest frame of the bar. The ring is
"paradox". A very similar but simpler
now Lorentz-contracted and rotated with respect to the bar, and the bar is uncontracted.
problem involving only inertial frames Again, the ring passes over the bar without touching it.
is the "bar and ring" paradox (Ferraro
2007) in which a bar which is slightly larger in length than the diameter of a ring is moving upward and to the right
with its long axis horizontal, while the ring is stationary and the plane of the ring is also horizontal. If the motion of
the bar is such that center of the bar coincides with the center of the ring at some point in time, then the bar will be
Lorentz-contracted due to the forward component of its motion, and it will pass through the ring. The paradox occurs
when the problem is considered in the rest frame of the bar. The ring is now moving downward and to the left, and
will be Lorentz-contracted along its horizontal length, while the bar will not be contracted at all. How can the bar
pass through the ring?
The resolution of the paradox again lies in the relativity of simultaneity (Ferraro 2007). The length of a physical
object is defined as the distance between two simultaneous events occurring at each end of the body, and since
simultaneity is relative, so is this length. This variability in length is just the Lorentz contraction. Similarly, a
physical angle is defined as the angle formed by three simultaneous events, and this angle will also be a relative
quantity. In the above paradox, although the rod and the plane of the ring are parallel in the rest frame of the ring,
they are not parallel in the rest frame of the rod. The uncontracted rod passes through the Lorentz-contracted ring
because the plane of the ring is rotated relative to the rod by an amount sufficient to let the rod pass through.
In mathematical terms, a Lorentz transformation can be separated into the product of a spatial rotation and a "proper"
Lorentz transformation which involves no spatial rotation. The mathematical resolution of the bar and ring paradox
is based on the fact that the product of two proper Lorentz transformations may produce a Lorentz transformation
which is not proper, but rather includes a spatial rotation component.

See also
• Twin paradox
• Bell's spaceship paradox
• Ehrenfest paradox
• Physical paradox
• Supplee's paradox
• Relativity of simultaneity
Ladder paradox 9

References
• Rindler, Wolfgang (2001). Relativity: Special, General and Cosmological. Oxford University Press.
ISBN 0-19-850836-0.
• H. van Lintel et al., The rod and hole paradox re-examined [1] (abstract only)
• Ferraro, Rafael (2007). Einstein's space-time: an introduction to special and general relativity [2]. Springer.
ISBN 9780387699462.

Further reading
• Edwin F. Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler, Spacetime Physics (2nd ed) (Freeman, NY, 1992)
- discusses various apparent SR paradoxes and their solutions

External links
• Special Relativity Animations [3] from John de Pillis.This inter-active animated train-and-tunnel paradox is an
analog of the pole (train) and barn (tunnel) paradox.

References
[1] http:/ / www. iop. org/ EJ/ abstract/ 0143-0807/ 26/ 1/ 003
[2] http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=wa3CskhHaIgC& dq=relativity+ bar+ and+ ring& source=gbs_navlinks_s
[3] http:/ / math. ucr. edu/ ~jdp/ Relativity/ SpecialRelativity. html
Article Sources and Contributors 10

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