Special Relativity in Week One: 1) The Principle of Relativity

Elisha Huggins

Citation: The Physics Teacher 49, 148 (2011); doi: 10.1119/1.3555498

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 Special Relativity in Week One:
1) The Principle of Relativity
Elisha Huggins, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
W
e like to begin an introductory physics course
with a law of physics that applies to everything,
has no known exceptions, and whose conse-
quences are already familiar to students. That law is the prin-
ciple of relativity. By focusing on the principle of relativity
itself, and a careful selection of the thought experiments, we
can comfortably introduce the basic concepts of special rela-
tivity that we will use later in the course.1 This allows us to
construct an introductory physics course that includes 20th-
and 21st-century physics as we go along, rather than shoving
modern physics off the back end.2
For several years we have been giving workshops at AAPT
meetings on how to introduce special relativity in the first
week. Our message to the audience has been—just try it. Teach
relativity for one week at the beginning, then use your familiar
textbook for the remainder of the course, and see what hap-
pens. Instructors have done this and reported a significant
change in the interest and attitude of the students.
Focus of these articles
This is the first of four articles that describe how we in-
troduce special relativity. Throughout, the emphasis is on
the principle of relativity itself. The intuitive explanation of
the principle is that you do not feel uniform motion—like a
smooth ride on a jet plane. Our formal definition is that there
is no experiment you can perform that allows you to detect
your uniform motion relative to empty space. In this first pa-
per we show that Einstein’s second postulate, that the speed of
light is the same to all observers, is itself a consequence of the
principle of relativity and Maxwell’s theory of light.
The second paper uses Einstein’s second postulate to
introduce the light pulse clock, which requires only the Py-
thagorean theorem to show that the clock runs slow by a factor
1 − v 2 / c 2 . Then we use the principle of relativity to show
that all clocks run slow in the same way.
In the third paper we use the muon lifetime movie by David
Frisch and James Smith to introduce the Lorentz contrac-
tion. They are able to show that time dilation and the Lorentz
contraction are two views of the same phenomenon. We have
placed that movie on a $10 CD available at www.physics2000.
com.
The fourth paper discusses an experiment in which we use
a split laser beam to simultaneously trigger the firing of two
flashbulbs that are located at opposite ends of a lecture bench.
It then becomes obvious that the flashes will not be simultane-
ous to someone watching the bench move by. Even the order
in which the bulbs fire depends upon which way the bench
is moving. We finish by showing that information itself can-
not travel faster than the speed of light (otherwise you could
148 The Physics Teacher ◆ Vol. 49, March 2011
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end up getting the answer to a question that has not yet been
thought of).
Throughout our discussion, we try to relate thought ex-
periments to real experiments. In our discussion of measur-
ing the speed of light pulses, we first measure the speed of a
wave pulse on a stretched Slinky™ to see what is involved in
such measurements. After a thought experiment deriving the
time dilation expected in a moving clock, we go to the muon
lifetime movie to view a real experiment on time dilation. In
our discussion of the lack of simultaneity, we actually carry
out part of the thought experiment to reduce the amount of
imagining necessary. We wish to focus on the idea that the
principle of relativity profoundly affects the physical behavior
of matter.
The principle of relativity
To introduce the principle of relativity, I start out by asking
how many of the students have flown in a jet plane. Nowadays
almost all the students raise their hands. Then I ask, “Did you
feel that motion? What did it feel like rushing through space at
600 miles per hour?” After blank stares, I get a response like,
“It did not feel like much, except for the occasional bump.”
I then point out that they have experienced the principle of
relativity. Most of the time, when the plane is not bouncing
around, you are traveling with uniform motion. The principle
of relativity is that you do not feel uniform motion.
For a basic law of physics, this definition is a bit vague. First
I need to explain that uniform motion is motion at constant
speed in a straight line. I discuss examples of uniform motion,
such as riding in a car at constant speed on a straight, smooth
highway. Then I make the point that if you cannot feel uni-
form motion, perhaps you are not moving. Could it be that it
is the road signs, telephone poles, and houses moving instead?
Students do not buy that point of view.
Then I introduce a thought experiment. I ask the students
to imagine that we are going to take a cross-country trip from
Boston to San Francisco on the Concord supersonic jet. The
3000-mile trip crosses three time zones. The jet leaves Boston
at noon and travels at a speed of 1000 mph. I ask, “What is
the local time when the jet reaches San Francisco?” An alert
student answers, “noon.” On the trip, we know that we are
moving because we can look down and see the fields and farm
houses go by. But are we really moving? Could it be that we are
at rest and that it is the fields and farm houses that are moving
by us?
I ask the students to look at the sketch of our trip shown
in Fig. 1. When we leave Boston the Sun is directly overhead.
When we get to San Francisco, the Sun is still directly over-
head. To someone with the perspective of Fig. 1, our plane
DOI: 10.1119/1.3555498
 went up in the air over Boston, the Earth turned for three
hours under the plane, and then the plane came back down in
San Francisco. It was the Earth that moved, not the plane.
Definition of the principle of relativity
The stage is now set for a more precise definition of the
principle of relativity. Imagine that you are in a capsule and
you may have any equipment you want inside the capsule. The
principle of relativity states that:
There is no experiment that you can perform
that will allow you to determine that the
capsule is moving with uniform motion.
We point out that our classroom is such a capsule. Due to
the rotation of the Earth, the motion of the Earth about the
Sun, the fact that the Sun is carried around by rotation of
the Milky Way galaxy, and then there is the expansion of the
universe, all these contribute to the motion of our classroom.
But only the rotation of the Earth, which carries us around
in a circle every 24 hours, has been directly observed. When
you are moving in a circle, you are not moving in a straight
line. This slight deviation from uniform motion can be
detected with a Foucault pendulum.
Speed of waves
There is one experiment that was expected to allow us to
detect uniform motion. That experiment involved the mea-
surement of the speed of a light wave.
To illustrate why such an experiment might be important,
we start with an analogous experiment that is easier to ob-
serve. It is the measurement of the speed of a compressional
pulse on a stretched Slinky. Figure 2 is a photograph of a
stretched Slinky suspended from a steel pipe. There is a sup-
porting thread from the pipe down to every fourth coil of the
Slinky.
If you pull back on one end of the Slinky and let go, you get
a compressional pulse like the one shown in Fig. 3, that travels
Sun Sun
supersonic jet supersonic jet
S Fig. 3. Compressional pulse.
Boston Fr an
San an
ci
Francisco sc
ro o
Ea tatin
rotating rth g
Earth
Fig. 1. A hypothetical trip from Boston to San Francisco.
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down the Slinky, reflects at the far end, and returns. Although
we had demonstrated these Slinky pulses for many years, only
recently did we do a careful analysis of the speed vpulse of a
compressional pulse. The result was vpulse = KL / µ , where K
is the Hooke’s law spring constant, L the length of the Slinky,
and m its mass per unit length.3,4
A phenomenon observed by David Keeports5 is that the
time it takes for the pulse to travel down the spring and come
back does not depend on how much you stretch the spring. To
see why, write the mass per unit length as m = m/L, where m is
the mass of the spring. Then our formula for vpulse becomes
KL KL2 K
vpulse = = =L .
m/L m m
The time T it takes the pulse to go down and back, a distance
2L, is T = 2L/vpulse. The factors of L cancel, with the result
that T should not depend on L. Figure 4 shows our test of this
feature of the pulse speed formula. We tripled the length of
the Slinky from 83 cm to 260 cm, and the time the pulse took
to go down and back changed by only one video frame, 2.83 s
to 2.87 s.
The point of our Slinky experiment is that we have a for-
mula for the speed of the Slinky wave pulse, and that we can
use a video camera and simple algebra to precisely test that
formula.
Relative motion
The next experiments are where we study my motion rela-
tive to the Slinky. As shown in Fig. 5(a), I hold a meterstick
Fig. 2. Slinky suspended by threads from a pipe.
Bo
sto
n
Fig. 4. We tripled the length of the Slinky and the pulse took
one more video frame to go down and back.
The Physics Teacher ◆ Vol. 49, March 2011 149
 under the Slinky, a student releases a compressional pulse, and
a second student uses a stopwatch to measure the time tpulse
that the pulse takes to pass from the front to the back of the
meterstick. From that I calculate that the speed of the pulse is
1m
vpulse = .
t pulse s
We check that vpulse agrees with our predicted speed
vpulse = KL / µ . The results are usually fairly good.
I then repeat the experiment, walking toward the student
who released the pulse as shown in Fig. 5(b). If I walk about
the same speed as the pulse, the pulse takes only half as long to
go by my meterstick. Thus the pulse passed by me at twice the
speed predicted by my formula vpulse = KL / µ .
The fact that in Fig. 5(b) I did not get the predicted pulse
speed is experimental evidence that I am moving relative to
the Slinky. When I was at rest relative to the Slinky, I got the
predicted speed. When I was moving relative to the Slinky, I
got a different answer.
This, of course, is not the easiest way to detect my motion
relative to the Slinky. I can just look at the Slinky and see it
move by me. But suppose the Slinky itself were invisible and
I could only see the pulse. Then I could use the procedure of
Fig. 5 to detect my motion relative to the invisible Slinky.
Speed of light pulses
In 1864, James Clerk Maxwell developed a theory of light
in which he predicted that light waves traveled at a speed,
which we will call c, given by the formula c = 1/ µ0ε0 , where
μ0 and ε0 are parameters in the theory of electromagnetism.
Fig. 5. (a) Measuring the speed of a Slinky pulse.
Fig. 5. (b) The pulse goes by faster when I walk toward it.
150 The Physics Teacher ◆ Vol. 49, March 2011
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How do we test this formula if we do not know what μ0 and
ε0 are? The answer is that in the introductory course, we per-
form what is called the LC lab, where we get an experimental
value for 1/ µ0ε0 that does not involve light itself. The result,
to within experimental error, is 6,7
1
= 3×108 m/s.
µ0ε0
Thus a clear prediction of Maxwell’s theory, combined with
an undergraduate lab experiment, is that the speed of light
should have the value
c = 0. 3×109 m/s = 1 foot/nanosecond
(where we define a “metric” foot to equal 0.3 m).
As we asked in our Slinky pulse experiment, who gets to
measure this value of the speed of light? Consider a thought
experiment where we repeat the experiment of Fig. 5, but
instead use light pulses rather than Slinky pulses. As shown
in Fig. 6(a), I hold up a meterstick and a student sends a laser
pulse past me. This time I have photocells mounted on my
meterstick so that I can measure the length of time it takes
the pulse to pass by my meterstick. Since a meterstick is 3.3 ft
long, I predict that this will take 3.3 ns. Let us assume that I
get this result.
In Fig. 6(b), I am moving toward the student at a high
speed, let us say almost c. If the results of our Slinky experi-
ment hold up, the pulse should pass by my meterstick in half
the time, and I should see the pulse pass by me at a speed of 2c,
twice the predicted speed.
In the Slinky experiment, when I saw the compressional
laser pulse
laser
Fig. 6. (a) Measuring the speed of light.
laser pulse
laser
Fig. 6. (b) Does the light pulse go by faster when I walk toward it?
 pulse pass by me at twice the predicted speed, I had experi-
mental evidence that I was moving relative to the Slinky. If I
see the light pulse pass by me at twice its predicted speed, I
have experimental evidence that I am moving relative to the
medium through which light moves.
But light moves through empty space. Observing the light
pulse passing by at a speed 2c allows me to detect my motion
relative to empty space. It allows me to violate the principle of
relativity.
If anybody observes a light pulse moving through
empty space at a speed different than the predicted speed7
c = 1/ µ0ε0 , he or she will be able to violate the principle of
relativity. Thus, if the principle of relativity is correct, we have
the result of Einstein’s second postulate, that the speed of light
must be the same to all observers.
This second postulate is counterintuitive. It does not work
for familiar objects like automobiles. There is no such thing
as a car that travels at 100 km/hr relative to everybody. If
you stand beside the road and a car passes you at 100 km/hr,
someone driving in the opposite direction at the same speed
sees the first car pass him or her at 200 km/hr. How can it be
that light pulses behave differently? The answer, we point out,
is that light moves at an incredible speed that is well beyond
our realm of experience. One of the most important lessons
of physics is that when we look in a realm we have not seen
5. David Keeports, “Demonstrating wave speed on a spring,” Phys.
Teach. 34, 460–461 (Oct. 1996).
6. In the LC experiment, the resonant oscillation frequency f of an
electric current moving between an inductor L and a capacitor
C is f = 2π / LC . If L is a solenoid of length h, area AL, with N
turns, and the capacitor C is a parallel plate capacitor of area AC
and plate separation d, then using the formulas L = μ0N2AL and
C = ε0AC/d, we can derive the result
L C
.
This result depends only on simple lab measurements that do
not involve light.
7. We have been asked if the numerical value of (μ0ε0) could
change due to the motion of the observer. If the principle of rel-
ativity is correct, the answer is no. Imagine a spaceship passing
by us on the way to colonize a planet. Suppose students in that
spaceship did the LC experiment and got a different value for
1/ µ0ε0 . Reading Earth-based physics texts, the students could
conclude that the change in the value of (μ0ε0) was due to the
uniform motion of the spacecraft, and thus the LC experiment
could be used to violate the principle of relativity.
Elisha Huggins is professor emeritus at Dartmouth College. He is always
looking for effective ways to teach physics concepts.
29 Moose Mt. Lodge Rd., Etna NH 03750; lish.huggins@
dartmouth.edu

before—the realm of high speeds, huge distances, or tiny dis-

tances—unexpected things happen.
What does the realm of high speeds, speeds near the speed
of light, look like? We use thought experiments such as a light
pulse clock, and experiments involving the lifetime of muons
on a mountain top, to find out. We learn that clocks moving at
a high speed run slow and that mountains moving by us con-
tract. That is the subject of the next articles.

References and Notes

1. For an interesting discussion on the history of the principle
of relativity as a physical law that applies to everything, see
Charles Scribner Jr., “Henri Poincaré and the principle of rela-
tivity,” Am. J. Phys. 36, 672–678 (Sept. 1964).
2. We have written two introductory physics textbooks, Phys-
ics2000 and Physics2000 Non-Calculus, that begin with special
relativity. Our main purpose was to explicitly demonstrate that
such a course could include basic modern physics topics in a
comfortably paced course, with no need for an extended edi-
tion. (The texts are discussed at www.physics2000.com.)
3. Elisha Huggins, “Speed of wave pulses in Hooke’s law media,”
Phys. Teach. 46, 142–146 (March 2008).
4. In contrast, the well-known formula for the speed of a trans-
verse wave is vwave = T / µ , where the tension T equals the
spring constant K times the length (L – L0) that the spring or
Slinky has been stretched. Thus the speed of the transverse
wave differs from that of a compressional wave by replacing
the L by (L – L0) in Eq. (1), where L0 is the unstretched length.
Since L0 is usually much smaller than L for a stretched Slinky,
the compressional and transverse Slinky waves have about the
same speed.

The Physics Teacher ◆ Vol. 49, March 2011 151

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