Relativity

So. Immagin a train in front of you. Your standing under the blue sky staeing foward at the box car. Under the boxcar you see shiny metal tracks that seem to go on forever. The box car is at a halt, parked in front of you. You open the huge sliding doors and see a mirror on the floor. You also see one on the seeling perfectly parelel to the on one thefloor.

You then see a beam of light. You notice the light going perfectly up and down bouncing between the mirrors. Each time the light goes up and back down, one second has gone by. This is a great way to measure time you thinkto yourself as you observe the slow moving light.

Then a hobo jumps on the train answer sits in the corner. The train starts to move foward. As it gains speed you notice the light bounce to the left a little. The hobo sees it bounce up and down perfectly though. Since it bounced to the left a little, it took longer to reach the other mirror, so that second was a little slower to you compared to the man on the train.

As the train gets faster and faster the light seems to bounce further to the left relative to you. Then the train reaches light speed and you notice the light seems to have stoped in the middle and is now traveling in the middle of the mirrors paralel to them. Time is now frozen to you relative to the man on the trian.

This is how i understand relativity... the longer the light between the two mirrors the longer the time for the guy on earth. The problem is.... dont I have it backwords???

 

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Light does not move slow, light moves at light speed... so you can't really formulate your description this way.

In fact, (I guess I am nitpicking, but it is important to have all the details right in such a description or you will misunderstand) there are many things wrong with your description... If the train is accelerating it changes things from if it was just moving at different speeds during your observations... The train may never reach the speed of light...

Still, I think you have, sort of, the right idea. It is hard to say, because accuracy in the details of such a thought experiment is very important.

Check this out.

 

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To further Nitpick (capitalised for a reason, though what that reason is is up for debate) Light doesn't move at C (Light speed) through all substances so its not entirely correct to say "light moves at Light speed", its more correct to say "Light moves at Light speed in a vacuum".

 

Just to tidy things up: light moves at different sppeds in different media but it always moves at the speed of light. C represents the speed of ligh in a vacuum.