A 13-Year-Old's Physics Dilemma

[fur]

Hi, I'm 13 and I really really love Physics, so I thought it would be a good idea to join this Forum. I research Maths and Physics in my own time, as this year we don't seem to go past the tangent function in maths... I was looking into special relativity before diving into general (bad idea?) and I discovered it only affected 'static' objects. Although this may seem basic, I'm having difficulty understanding why a laser in a photon clock would move in a zig-zag pattern, when it is moving as I would of thought, that when the photon was fired from the laser this was at a moment of time, and it would continue moving forwards from where it was shot, while the rest of the mechanism moves forwards. Help please?

 

[A.T.]

I'm having difficulty understanding why a laser in a photon clock would move in a zig-zag pattern,

If it stays between the two mirrors in one frame (e.g. clocks rest frame) it will do so in every frame. Just because you move relative to the clock, you cannot observe something completely different, like the photon escaping from from the clock.