wrote:

Gamma

I am a passenger on a spaceship named Frame1. We left earth (Frame0)
yesterday and accelerated to 150,000,000m/sec wrt Frame0. On earth,
our spaceship was built to be 1000m long.

As we continue to maintain our speed of 150,000,000m/sec, the Captain
tells us that our length as seen by earth would be 866m. He said that
the reduced length was the result of relativity. He said it could be
calculated by the gamma formula, ie
1000*sqrt(1-1500000000^2/300000000^2).

Did the Captain apply the formula correctly?

Are you coming straight at our noses (relativistic contraction) or
whizzing on past (Terrell rotation)?

http://bkocay.cs.umanitoba.ca/Students/Theory.html
The distorted cube

http://fourmilab.to/etexts/einstein/specrel/specrel.pdf
Einstein's Special Relativity...
http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/sr/ae_1905_error.htm
...and it's typographic error.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!