Thank you very much for all comments and the time you spent for this. The comments are very enlightened. (Sorry - I was not aware that the time delays due to the signal propagations are indeed included in the more advanced classical mechanics)
But I still have an unresolved puzzle with this...
Speed of information – effects of on classical mechanics.
(This is not a homework or coursework question. Even if the problem stated is simple, the answer is maybe not.)
Problem: A mass is hanging vertically in a not heavy, quite inelastic and hard to compress cable which is fixed in the...
Thanks for your comment.
The speed of sound in steel is about 5000 m/s.
But still - does the top part start falling before the bottom part? The spring expansion is depending on the weight of the mass in the bottom part of the table so that the contraction of the cable is limited to the...
Thanks for your comment.
First of all I would like to exclude the effect of the spring force accelerating the top part of the cable downwards from the analysis to be continued. That upward force is very small compared to the gravitational downward force as the numerical example showed – the...
Assume a weight hanging vertically in a strong, thin and inelastic long cable which is fixed in the top end. The top end cable is then released. When will the mass at the bottom part of the cable start moving downwards??
a) Immediately. In this case information is transferred faster than...
As for the suspended line and standing waves contributed by user rjb – there is a variation of the spaceship problem.
Assume a cable car suspended by a cable in the middle between two cable towers. The cable car sends a radio signal at t0 to the two towers which makes them release the cable...
Thank you very much for your comments and ideas.
But there are several things that do not make sense for me.
a) If the information of the broken line is transmitted with the speed of sound for the material of the line – say it is 1% of the light speed – then we end up in the situation that...
When the Police spaceship attaches the line to the Bandit Space ship and starts pulling – then I agree that it will take some time for the pulling force to reach the Bandit ship – corresponding to the speed of sound for that line.
However, the situation is that line breaks close to the...
I guess that the "spring energy" from the tension in the now broken line will not be able to pull the Bandit ship for one minute with the same force as before. This energy will be released in the movements of the line when moving around, probably also partly as heat radiation.
I guess that...
Assume there is Police spaceship that did catch a Bandit spaceship by a thin, light but strong high-tech line which is one light minute long. The Police space tries to pull the Bandit Space into prison but the Bandit space reverses its engines so that both space ships now stand still – say...