Thought experiment Definition and 340 Threads

Hello everyone, I was working on a thought experiment and came upon an inconsistent result that I thought maybe I could get some help with. Firstly I am using natural units (c = unitless 1 i.e 1 light second per second) and I chose v = 3/5 to make gamma come out nicely (gamma equals 5/4 when v...

Bob lives on floor 500 in a 1000 meter high skyscraper. Bob has measured the time it has taken a star to orbit 1 round in the Milky Way relative to Earth. He started by measuring at the time when a single photon from the star was received exactly at the center of his telescope, and ended the...

A light source in uniform motion emits a flash of light. A spherically symmetric wavefront propagates from a central point, the source, or the “origin” of emission. The wave front remains at c relative to the origin as measured by all observers. How fast do these origins move? Am I missing...

I'm a 16 year old who has wondered this question for a while. If the multiverse theory is correct, and I understand correctly, there would be infinite universes in which each universe would be different from another in some form. If this is the case, would that mean that places and worlds that...

Imagine a plane 1 light minute across. Now imagine 1 person on either and of that plane. Between them, is a thin indestructible bar that is 1 light minute in length. In the center of this plane, a simple device has a wire that leads to a motion sensor on the left side of the bar. If the left...

Consider a Double Slits experiment in which the light source is monochromatic and each slit very narrow. There will be many fringes visible on either side of the axis. 1) If the light source is pulsed with very short, randomly spaced, pulses it will produce spectrally broadened radiation and...

I'm hoping this is basic and obvious, but assume it's not to the general public. Ignore quantum mechanics and diffraction and assume a gun that can fire photons that each hit the center of a remote target. Place one of these and a conventional gun that shoots bullets at 1000 m/sec inside of a...

Let's take a beam of spin 1/2 particles prepared in the state |up> in the Z direction, let's pass it through a Stern& Gerlach apparatus in the X direction to get two beams of spin |right> and spin |left>, and then redirect these two beams directly in another inverted S&G to reunite them in one...

The drawing above is regarding a thought experiment of mine. Air at ambient pressure is being blown through a convergent-divergent nozzle and in the throat section, a water filled enclosed container is attached through a tube. The water container has sufficient surface area for supplying...

I'm sure most will be familiar with the well-known ball and cup trick. The dynamics of the game itself are unimportant, we just need to have the image of 5 cups with a single ball being revealed when the relevant cup is lifted. The Set-up Imagine a machine which has a conveyor belt coming out...

Let there be a track 450,000 km long and a rocket 300,000 km long with a laser attached to the bottom of it's back end with a clock beside it, and a second synchronized clock attached to bottom of its front end. Both clocks were also synchronized with a track clock while the rocket was parked...

Thought experiment. Let's suppose I lay bricks around the entire Earth going up 50 miles in height. I am assuming this way there's going to be more bricks at the top than at the bottom right? Well... What If I was to get a football/soccer pitch (100meters in length and concreted with spirit...

According to the uncertainty principle, when we measure a micro-object with a measuring device, we cannot predict what value the device will show. But if we knew exactly the wave function of this device, together with the wave function of the micro-object, could we exactly predict the result of...

Thought experiment: (1.1) You have a homogenous object, made of one element, floating in space. (1.2) Gravity has completed the process of accelerating its atoms and molecules into the final state, such that the object is a crystalline sphere. (1.3) Gravity continues to act on the object, even...

If we place a cork in a beaker then filled the beaker with normal-sized marbles, the cork will remain stationary at the bottom of the beaker. However, if we continuously decrease the size of the marble, at a certain point, the marbles will behave like a liquid and the cork will rise to the top...

Let us consider a hypothetical scenario, where we are able to translate any mass at a constant speed of 10m/s w.r.t to a given frame of reference. For simplicity, we are going to assume that the object is at rest initially. Case 1 - Now, consider 2 points A and B at a distance of 10m, and our...

From the michelson-morley experiment, if a clock were to measure the time period of light hitting the mirror and returning back, it would be 2L/c, where L is the distance between the laser nd the mirror. For a moving observer, the time period would have a factor of *gamma*, the boost factor...

Hi all, I was thinking punching a round ball on a flat surface and seeing how I could determine a formula for force from it. I thought the following: 1. The ball will go further the harder I punch and thus force must be proportional to displacement d. 2. Ball will go further if it is lighter...

Someone asked a really interesting question on a comment thread somewhere's, and ever since, I could never really stop thinking about what the proper answer to it could be. It's a really basic question, but it unpacks a can of worms. The exact question I read was the following This question...

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-future.html The paper in question can be found at https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-021-00589-1 This thread is for discussion of the said paper.

I have been looking through some of the threads about the twins paradox in relativity. It’s clear there’s a lot of confusion on this, and I am yet one more person very confused on this. So I was thinking about a hypothetical experiment, and I will lay out my hypothesis of what might...

If your house wall is made of pendulum or a ball attached to a string on top. It won't attract seismic forces. Whereas if the wall is fixed solid. It can attract seismic forces. What is the physics explanation of it? Is it because you try to deflect momentum or inertia? What is the right...

I would like to conduct a thought experiment. If some form of medium exists, what would it be made of? What form would any constituent parts take? Would those parts exhibit any properties? How would they function as a medium? What relation would the medium have with atoms and other particle...

Ok, so we know that if one were inside a donut-shaped spaceship that is rotating around it's axis, that the passengers will experience centripetal force. It seems obvious to say that the ship is rotating relative to the nearby stars and planets. So far, so good. But... what if we removed all...

Imagine I hang a mass from the ceiling of a building using a rope. The mass is hanging 2m above the floor. Also tied "in line" with this rope, and between the weight and the ceiling, is a scale that measures the weight of the mass. Let's say the scale reads 10 Newtons. Now, between the...

Background --- Consider the following thought experiment in the setting of relativistic quantum mechanics (not QFT). I have a particle in superposition of the position basis: H | \psi \rangle = E | \psi \rangle Now I suddenly turn on an interaction potential H_{int} localized at r_o =...

Hello all, I recently did a thought experiment and thought, "what if the universe as a whole is spinning?" This could solve the dark energy problem, as if the universe was spinning, there would be outward pull, and therefore keep the universe expanding. And, I don't know if this means anything...

I am not too sure how to approach this, initially I thought it may be more of a calculus and related rates of change problem, i.e. finding an expression how the volume and height of water change with respect fo time. I do not know whether this is the right idea or how to progress any further...

I am trying to understand a thought experiment I just posed, which is: if an observer is traveling near the speed of light, and sends out two photons; one in the direction of travel and one in the opposite direction, how does general relativity account for time dilation? The photon "in front"...

I have been thinking about the Violation of bell inequalities , trying to justify how non locality can be determined from violation of bell tests. I have been through Dr. Chinese page which has partially convinced me that there can be no hidden variables , but I need to understand what...

suppose suddenly the sun disappears at a time t. at this arbitrary time t, the Earth should fling off tangentially to the point in its orbit at time t as there is no centripetal force keeping it in orbit. we know light takes about 8 minutes to reach the earth. so will humans on Earth experience...

I'd like to get some feedback on the following argument. Gallilean mechanics, with the Gallilean transformation laws, is a perfectly consistent theory. Special relativity, with the Lorentz transformation laws, is another perfectly consistent theory. The question is - can we have some physical...

On p.170 of French's book on special relativity there is this thougth experiment attributed to Lewis and Tolman (1909). It is about two individuals throwing identical balls of mass M at each other with identical speed. The balls bounce against each other and are caught again. See attached...

Alice travels in a spaceship, which she measures to be L. The spaceship is moving with velocity v relatively to Bob. Alice makes a light beam traveling along the spaceship and measures the time interval it takes to go from one end to another, ΔtA. So, equation (1): L = c × ΔtA From Bob's...

This is a thought experiment I had with myself a couple of weeks ago. I have never seen it proposed. But please be kind I am not physicist but just a hobbyist. So this experiment is specifically for entangled photons. So here goes. I was thinking of something going faster and faster and time...

I know the amazing thought experiment by Albert Einstein with the two light clocks. (The observer at the train station has a light clock and the person in the train.) It's amazing because you can even deduce the formula to calculate how fast the clock in the train goes. But this experiment...

Ok so here's my idea,it came to me while watching a record album spin on my turntable(I believe it was Dark Side of the Moon). Technically this exp. could be done now but the results would take a while. You take a disc of some super strong material attach it to a ultra high RPM motor and put...

Hi :) I just had a (most likely totaly unoriginal) thought and thought I should try to ask someone who's thinkings on physics are somewhat more refined than mine. So after thinking twice about private messaging Mr Tyson and Mr Cox :) I decided to google 'physics forum'. So here I am with my...

The other day my friend asked me a really interesting question regarding the scene from interstellar where they go down to Miller's planet, where every hour on this planet is 7 years of Earth time. He asked me if they were to send a signal to the spaceship where Romilly was, what would happen...

In Introduction to special relativity by Resnick,there is a thought experiment to compare lengths perpendicular to relative motion as given in the below image. What if we try to perform such an experiment to compare lengths parallel to relative motion? Suppose there are two horizontal rods...

If we’re looking through a telescope at a craft we launched from Earth that is now passing Mars and send a radio signal to our craft telling it to turn on one of its lights on and it takes thirteen minutes for the radio waves to get from Earth to our craft how long will it take before we see the...

I've been struggling to develop an intuition about Einstein’s relativity, without luck, until i invented my own thought experiment, to help me. Now i feel i have the intuition, but it leads me to a new misunderstanding, i hope someone here might help me clarify. My thought experiment involves...

I am trying to come up with a design for a device with which to generate a rapidly pulsed proton beam (on the order of 1 pulse per ms). My thought was to apply a 10 kV potential between two parallel plates (each with a hole in their center) and inject a steady stream of hydrogen gas through the...

So I got this from an article on wikipedia that covers Einstein's train thought experiment: A popular picture for understanding this idea is provided by a thought experiment similar to those suggested by Daniel Frost Comstock in 1910[13] and Einstein in 1917.[14][12] It also consists of one...

Take one radioactive element and put a detector all around it so that you can immediately detect whenever it will undergo radioactive decay. Have a clock connected to the detector to note the "exact" instant at which the atom decays. Let's say that after 3min after the clock started counting the...

Let's modify Einstein's thought experiment on simultaneousness. A person G on ground sits in the middle of two fireworks. The fireworks are wired (equal distance) to an ignitor just in front of the person G. A person T on a train of constant velocity V passes by the ignitor and pushes the button...

Hi Pf Instead of placing a screen on each path of an interometer i propose to place opticz traps. in both cases it will unable the photon to go further. i wonder if one on the traps will be heavier or if there will be symmetry (superposition).

It's come to my attention that if we were to travel in a spaceship at 0.5c directly away from our sun, I would observe that the light from the sun as being red shifted. What I would also observe was that this red shifted electromagnetic wave would in fact travel away from me in the spaceship...