Proving the Absence of Length Contraction Perpendicular to Velocity

When teaching conceptual physics, students almost always ask why length contraction only occurs parallel to velocity and not perpendicular to it. That’s a meaty conceptual question and one that always leaves me looking for a convincing, non mathematical explanation. Earlier this semester, I finally found what I think is the best one I’ve ever heard […]

Matter & Interactions I, Week 3

This week, we encountered what, in my opinion, is the most fundamental aspect of special relativity: the loss of absolute simultaneity. The Michelson-Morley experiment established that light’s speed must be invariant. An immediate consequence of this is that two events that are simultaneous in one inertial frame cannot be simultaneous in any other frame. Last […]