“Triangles and Time Warps”

By, David.R.Gilson, MPhys, AMInstP

http://www.davidgilson.co.uk
Copycenter 2006
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycenter)

Name:…………………………………………………………
 “Triangles and Time Warps”

Einstein’s thought experiment

The inspiration that lead Albert Einstein to create his “theory of (special) relativity” is
a very simple idea that makes us all realise that our everyday perception of relative
motion is incorrect.
When we are talking about relativity we often talk about “Frames of reference”. These
are simply some words to discriminate between observers (i.e. people) that are
moving relative to each other.
In a previous session we discussed how two observers, one stationary (relative to us!)
and one moving (relative to us) would measure a completely different speed for the
same object because they themselves have different relative speeds.
For instance, consider three people, A, B and C and they are all equipped with speed
measuring devices. Person A is stood still on the roadside, and persons B and C are
driving cars. Person B is travelling at 30mph and Person C is travelling at 60mph.

Person B

30 mph

Person C
60 mph

Person A

Person A measure the same speeds as we do since we are stationary to person A.

However, Person B would only measure Person C moving forwards at 30 mph and
would see Person A moving backwards at 30mph too. Person C would measure
Person B moving backwards at 30mph and Person A moving backwards at 60mph!
This is our everyday notion of relative motion.
About a century ago, a physicist named James Maxwell wrote a famous set of
equations about light. He deduced that the speed of light was a fixed number, unlike a
car where you can vary the speed by pressing the accelerator or the brake pedals. In
any given material there is nothing that can change the speed of light, it is a law of
nature.
Going back to our picture with the cars, whether we are standing still, driving at
30mph or 60mph, it is reasonable to assume that the laws of nature are the same
everyone. Just because you are moving faster or slower than someone else does not
mean that the laws of nature will change for you.
For Einstein this raised a worrying question: what if Person’s A, B and C were all to
try measuring the speed of light? Because they all have different relative speeds to
each other; Person A and B never agree on Person C’s speed, and so on. However, the

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speed of light is a law of nature for which everyone must agree, regardless of how fast
you are moving!

?
Person B

30 mph
LIGHT

?
Person C
? 60 mph

Person A

There has to be something wrong in our everyday experience of space and time
and relative motion because we cannot explain why person A and B do not agree on
the speed of person C but they do agree on the speed of light!

So our question is this: “how can all frames of reference disagree on relative speeds of
other frames of reference, yet they all agree on the speed of light?”

We are now going to take this physics based idea and apply mathematics step by step
to investigate and solve our problem!

First of all though, we need to look in our mathematical box of tricks and make sure
we have the right tools for the job!

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 “Triangles and Time Warps”

Mathematical tools
Here is a list of mathematical techniques that will be used as we tackle our problem, you may
need to refer back to this page to help you perform each step of our investigation!
Factorisation
You can think of factorisation as the opposite to multiplying out brackets. Here are some
examples of factorisation (remember that in algebra “AB” means “A multiplied by B”).
AB + AC = A( B + C ) and AB − AC = A( B − C )
5 ∗ 4 + 5 ∗ 3 = 5 ∗ ( 4 + 3) = 35 and 5 ∗ 4 − 5 ∗ 3 = 5 ∗ ( 4 − 3) = 5
In these examples going from left to right is factorisation and going from right to left is
multiplying out brackets. When factorising you simply divide all terms by a common factor
that you place outside the brackets. With that in mind here is another example of how you can
factorise: ( A − B ) = A(1 − B A)
(Jargon Buster: “Common Factor” means a number/variable that all terms are multiplied
by, i.e. it is a factor that is common to all, in the numerical example above 5 is the common
factor).
Squares and square roots
You will have come across these before, but you might not have used them together. Taking
squares and square roots are opposite operations, just like adding and subtracting are. If you
take a number, square it, then take the square root of that number you return to your original
number. Here are some examples.

A 2 = AA and if B = A 2 then B = A and also, ( A) 2

= A

In other words, AA = A2 = ( A) 2
= A
Square roots of products
(Jargon Buster: a “product” just means, “some things multiplied together”!!!)
If you have the square root of a product (see the jargon buster above), you can split the square
root into a product of square roots. Here is a numerical example to prove this to you…

100 = 4 ∗ 25 = 4∗ 25 = 2 ∗ 5 = 10 and in general we can write,

AB = A B , A and B can be anything, say if we’d factorised something and taken square
roots we could write C ( A − B ) = C ( A − B ) . The same applies when taking squares, so
we can simply write ( AB ) = A 2 B 2 .
2

Simplifying Equations
Factorisation involves dividing one side of an equation through by a common factor and
placing that factor outside of brackets. If you have the same factor on both sides of an
equation you can divide both sides by that factor to remove that factor from the equation. This
is called simplifying. Here is an example:
LA LC A C
= will simplify to = by dividing both sides by L.
B D B D

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The Investigation
For our investigation we have an imaginary piece of equipment that we use to
measure the speed of light called a “light clock”. It is simply a dark box with an
emitter at the bottom and a detector at the top, which are both linked to a timer. We
know the size of the box, so if we fire the emitter some light is sent from the bottom
of the box to the top of the box and the timer is started. When the light hits the
detector at the top the timer is stopped. Hence we have a distance and a time from
which we can calculate the speed of light, given that speed=distance/time.
Before we go on, it should be pointed out that the speed of light is universally given
the symbol “c”!
We also have two imaginary people, A and B. Both A and B have a light clock each.
For our investigation we imagine that A stands still with us and B is moving past us in
a fast car. We will call the time to get from bottom to top in A’s clock tA and we will
call the time taken to get from bottom to top in B’s clock tB.
Let’s look at A’s light clock,

c
L tA =00:00

Hence, after a time tA the light has travelled at a speed c and covered a distance
L = ct A . Using what you know complete the two following equations using the
quantities in the diagram above:

t =
[ ] c=
[ ]
A [ ] [ ]

That was fairly straight forward, now lets look at B, this is more complicated because
of B’s sideway motion relative to us and A. B is moving sideways with a speed of v.
Our first aim is to compute what tB is, and then use that to calculate the speed of light
as you did above.
When we watch the beam of light go from bottom to top in B’s light clock we see the
light take a diagonal path because of the sideways motion.

c
L
v
Time=0 Time=t B

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In the time it takes the light in B’s clock to get from bottom to top (being tB) B has
moved a sideways distance of vtB and also in that time the beam of light travelled a
distance ctB. Since the direction of B’s motion is at right angles to the height of the
box we can now form a right-angled triangle.

ctB
L

vtB
We can apply Pythagoras’s theorem here, fill in the blanks below:

[ ]2[ ]2 = [ ]2[ ]2 + [ ]2
Keep in mind that we are trying to compute tB, so the next logical step is to get all the
terms containing tB on the same side, hence subtract v 2 t B2 from both sides and fill in
the blanks below:

[ ] 2[ ]2 − [ ]2[ ]2 = [ ]2
t B2 is now a common factor on the left hand side so you can factorise it out, complete
the following:

[ ] 2 ([ ] 2 − [ ] 2 ) = [ ] 2
We nearly have tB by itself, but it is still squared so now would be a good time to take
the square root of both sides (look back at the part about square roots in our tool box
on page 4 if you need to).

[ ] [ ]2 − [ ]2 = [ ]
Now all we have to do to compute tB is to divide both sides by the square root term
that appears on the left hand side above. You’ve guessed it, try filling in the blanks
below!

[ ]= [ ]
[ ]2 − [ ]2
We have now found tB, using this equation we would like to rearrange it to give an
expression for the speed of light, c, so that we can compare with A’s equation for c.
However, in its present form the equation above does not give us easy access to c, so
we need to use some more of our mathematical tricks to get at it!
The speed of light appears in one place, within the square root. However it is possible
to use factorisation to extract a factor of c2 then we can split the square root (see
examples in the tool box!). With that in mind; fill in the blanks in the next equation.

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L
tB =

c  1 −
2 [ ] 2 
 [ ] 2 
We can now split the square root in to a product of two square roots (refer back to the
toolbox for this). When we do this one of our square roots is of c squared, which if
you look at the toolbox you will see just gives us c. Writing it our properly gives us;
c 2 = c . So, we have finally extracted c by itself! If you follow this idea, try filling
in the blanks below:
L
tB =
[ ] 1−
[ ]2
[ ]2
The square root term is a very important mathematical object in relativity, and it
appears in almost every relativistic calculation that someone may perform, so much so
we give it a special symbol, “γ”, which is a Greek letter called, “Gamma”. We define
Gamma as:
1
γ =
v2
1−
c2
Therefore, we write tB as:
Lγ
tB =
c
So we have finally computed tB in such a way that we can rearrange to give an
expression for c. Remember the only reason we are doing this is because we want to
compare equations of c for Person A (stationary) and Person B (moving). So, for both
A and B we have the following equations:
L Lγ
c= & c=
tA tB
Now think about our original problem, the speed of light is the same for everybody!
That means that the speed of light is the same for A and B, i.e. both c’s are the same
thing! So we can now write a new equation:
L Lγ
=
tA t B
Both sides of this have a factor of L, so we can simplify it now (see the toolbox):
1 γ
=
t A tB

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We can multiply both sides by tA and then by tB to get rid of the fractions too:

tB = γ ⋅ t A
This in itself is quite surprising, it shows us that time is different for A and B. We
would expect everyone’s clocks to be the same from our everyday experience, but this
is not so according to our final equation here.
If you look back at the definition of Gamma, the only variable is v, the relative speed
between A and B. They say a picture tells a thousand words, plotting a graph gives us
a picture of an equation and is an invaluable tool. Below is a graph of Gamma versus
relative speed, we can see how Gamma varies as v increases.

Chart of the Gam m a factor ve rs us re lative s pe e d be tw e e n tw o fram e s of

re fe re nce .
(note that the s pe e d of light is approxim ate ly 300 m illion m e te rs pe r s e cond!)

18
17
16
15
14
13
12
11
Gamma

10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

0 100 200 300

Relative speed (million-meters per second)

This shows us that gamma slowly increases as the speed between frames of reference
increases. You should note the huge speeds required to cause a significant increase in
Gamma.
If we recall the equation for A and B’s time we can see that from A’s point of view
time in B’s frame will appear to increase. In other words, from A’s frame of
reference, time in B’s frame of reference will appear to slow down. This is because
Gamma is greater than or equal to one, which means multiplying tA by Gamma
guarantees that tB will always be larger than tA.
Before we start to disbelieve this incredible result, we should study our chart. Notice
how large a relative speed must be before a noticeable increase in Gamma is reached!
Notice also at how the graph seems to be almost vertical and never quite passing
through the speed of light threshold? This is a hint at a deeper result of relativity, that
the speed of light is a kind of universal speed limit. To date, we know of nothing that

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can travel faster than light, and indeed there is only light that can reach the exact
speed of light.
This is a very weird result, but it is real and has been tested in numerous experiments.
You should also realise that from B’s frame of reference time is moving slowly for us
because B observes A (and us) moving away at v as well.
This effect of “moving clocks running slow” is what Einstein called “Time Dilation”.
There are other relativistic effects that go along with Time Dilation. “Length
Contraction” for instance is an effect where the more your speed approaches the speed
of light you will observe length of objects outside of your frame of reference begin to
shrink, or contract. There is much more to this rich subject, but I leave that for you to
find out about those as you continue your studies.

Conclusion
This is a fascinating exercise in itself, but discovering Time Dilation was not the main
goal. What you have done in this exercise is taken on board reasoned problems using
physics based concepts, and have then applied pure mathematics to model the ideas
and have come up with a experimentally testable result. By simply using our
mathematics we have discovered something far beyond our own experience of
everyday life and learnt something new about the universe!
Hopefully now you will see that mathematics is not as divorced from the real world as
it can seem sometimes and that it can be a tremendously powerful tool!

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