Does light follow the theorem of the addition of velocities employed in classical...

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Kent N

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...mechanics? for example:
the light travels at 300,000 km/s
when a man flashes the light whale riding a train running at 50 km/s
does the speed of the light becomes 300,050 km/s?
 
No. The speed of light is a constant. This means distance and time have to be variable.

Let's take your experiment to extreme. A man riding a spacecraft at 5km/hr slower than the speed of light. He passes a man that flashes a light in the direction he is traveling. With your point of view he should be able to reach out and grab one of these photons traveling past him at 5km/hr. Relativity says the photons will actually pass him at the speed of light.

So both the man in the craft and the man with the flashlight will measure the photons traveling at the speed of light. (note that due to the Doppler shift, the frequency of light for the man in the craft will be near zero Hz) For this to happen, both men measure the time it takes for a photon to travel a certain distance. They both come up with the same time and distance. This means their measure of time and distance is not the same.

Look up Lorentz transformation. The equations may look tough at first glance, but the denominator (the square root of 1-v^2/c^2) is simply saying as velocity v approaches speed of light c, the fraction v^2/c^2 approaches 1. So as you approach the speed of light. the denominator gets smaller. think it out. it will make sense.
 
Hertz waves cannot be faster than 300,000 km/sec . However, Tesla waves can be faster.
 
Speed of light is observed to be the same by all observers in the universe.

This is because as you start moving with a high velocity ( comparable to that of light ) your experience of space and time itself is now different.

That is if you (traveling at a very high speed) and me ( standing on earth )
were to see the same object say, a space ship our description of the objects dimensions as well as rate of change (time) would not be the same.

Thus as you start speeding up the time and distances you experience
begin to differ from those how are traveling at a low velocity.

This causes the ratio of distance traveled by light to the time it takes changes thus causing you to observe the same speed in which ever direction and speed one is travelling at.
 
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