26.10 Length contraction

Before you read this, I suggest you read post 26.8. Length contraction is the idea that the concept of length changes when an object moves with a speed comparable with the speed of light. It is not about thermal contraction – the decrease in the length of an object when its temperature decreases. In post 26.8 we saw how motion at speeds comparable to the speed of light influences the concept of time: here we will investigate how it influences the concept of length. The two posts could be considered as a complication in our understanding of length and time as given in post 16.12. They are another example of how explaining science involves diminishing deception – see post 17.25. Let’s think about two inertial frames of reference S and S’; S’ moves with a speed v relative to S. The velocity of S’, relative to S, is given by the vector v. I am going to use the direction of v to define direction in the rest of this post. Now let’s think about an object in S’ that moves with a speed V, in…

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