ADDITION OF VELOCITY

B.SC. First Year

Dr. Jagannath Panjiyar

Assistant Professor
Patna Science College
Email: drpanjiyar2018@gmail.com
Mob:9661029718

What is Velocity Transformation

• Imaging a car is travelling at night along a straight road as shown
in figure.
• The driver sees the light leaving the headlights at speed c within
the car’s frame of the reference.
 • If the Galilean transformation is applied to light, then the light
from the car’s headlight would approach the pedestrian at the
speed u = v+c, contrary to Einstein’s postulates

bmm

The derivation of the velocity addition formula

• There are three key steps for the derivation the Velocity
Addition Formula(VAF) according to the Special Theory
Relativity(STR).
• The below system of equations represent the Lorentz
transformations (LT) i.e
If we divide the equation (1), then we obtain

That is, the velocity of the source does not add anything to
the velocity of light emitted by it. In other words, it is
impossible to exceed the velocity of light by adding two or
more velocities, no matter how close each of these
velocities are to that of light