Special relativity - please can someone clear this up?

[robphy]

In my opinion, one of the best articles on the Twin Paradox is:

"The Clock Paradox in Relativity Theory"
Alfred Schild
American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Jan., 1959) , pp. 1-18

If your institution has access to JSTOR, it is available here
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-9890%28195901%2966%3A1%3C1%3ATCPIRT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L

 

[John_M]

I'm a law student in the UK...my institution certainly doesn't have access.

I suppose you couldn't send me a copy? (hope I don't get banned from the forum for asking that...)

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think your best bet, John, is to get a grasp on those worldlines that ambitwistor explained to me. They are pretty easy, they explain everything, and they cut through the fact that everyone seems to have a different take on the acceleration explanation.

 

[pervect]

I'm a law student in the UK...my institution certainly doesn't have access.

I suppose you couldn't send me a copy? (hope I don't get banned from the forum for asking that...)

It may not be the best thing ever written on the twin paradox, but you could start by finding and reading the sci.physics.faq entry on the twin paradox.

If you pick up any text on relativity, it will probably have some discussion on this as well.

Basically, it should be easy to find a lot of material on the subject.

It's really not that hard to understand. As the sci.physics.faq points out, perhaps the biggest obstacle is that there are so many diifferent ways of explaining the paradox. Personally I favor pointing out that the "paradox" is closely related to the triangle identity. In Euclidiean geometry, the shortest idistance between two points is a straight line, and as a consequence of this, the sum of two sides of a triangle is always longer than the direct route.

In relativity, the shortest distance between two points has the longest proper time, because the sign of the time term in the metric is inverted.

So if two different clocks take different routes to the same definition, the one that takes the straight-line path reads the longest, all other clocks read a lower amount of time.

 

[clj4]

Is there a book you can buy on the twin paradox which outlines all the main arguments - and who's made them?

One that includes how to deal with SR in accelerating frames of reference...

John

Here is one of the best explanations complete with a beautiful solution:

http://sheol.org/throopw/sr-ticks-n-bricks.html

All free. have fun!