Going the Speed of Light

What if the center of a record was traveling at the speed of light, at what rate would the edge of the disk travel at?
It wouldn't travel at all because the record would break.

Would the edge break at the point it reaches the speed of light since the center is still accelerating?

It would break well before the edge reached those speeds due to centrifugal force. If you want to ignore that, the disk would break long before the edge reached the speed of light due to length contraction. If you had an unbreakable unbendable disk, you wouldn't be able to move it at all.
 
hahaha, this thread is hillarious ;)
after 3 years of studying physics i know that some things are hard to believe if you hear them for the first time, but u'll get used to it ;)

heres sth to think about:
imagine a wall with an infinite height falls over in your direction: does it make sense to run away ?

mfg
manu
 
heres sth to think about:
imagine a wall with an infinite height falls over in your direction: does it make sense to run away ?
is it infinitely wide?

Hmm. I'm not sure it matters for his question. I guess I would say it doesn't matter if it runs away, because no matter how far away from the wall you are, it should never crush you, because it would need to fall an infinite distance to get there. I'm unsure of this answer, but it seems to make sense to me.
 
Hmm. I'm not sure it matters for his question. I guess I would say it doesn't matter if it runs away, because no matter how far away from the way you are, it should never crush you, because it would need to fall an infinite distance to get there. I'm unsure of this answer, but it seems to make sense to me.
Yeah, I just thought of that too. But that brings up the question, can an infinitely tall wall fall over at all? I guess it really depends on what assumptions you make about the wall.
 
But that brings up the question, can an infinitely tall wall fall over at all?

My first thought was "hehehe there's a lot of rhyming words in that sentence"

Well let's see...if you're further away, then the angle between the wall and the floor is smaller, so it's been falling for longer, so it's going faster. But the whole infinite thing suggests it's probably infinitely massive, so you might be out of luck anyway...

I could try to actually set up some equations and send L to infinity, but I'm too lazy to do a differential equation right now.
 
The wall would never fall over, you could live your life with it falling and would never complete the fall. The top of it would be not be going faster than the speed of light, so even if it was, it would take an astronomical number of astronomical numbers of years to actually complete the fall.
 
The wall would never fall over, you could live your life with it falling and would never complete the fall. The top of it would be not be going faster than the speed of light, so even if it was, it would take an astronomical number of astronomical numbers of years to actually complete the fall.

Uhh. No. It would never be able to fall. There is no amount of time at any speed where traveling an infinite distance is possible.

Obviously no such wall can exist, so the question poses a lot of problems, it's really a paradox.
 
hahaha, this thread is hillarious ;)
after 3 years of studying physics i know that some things are hard to believe if you hear them for the first time, but u'll get used to it ;)

heres sth to think about:
imagine a wall with an infinite height falls over in your direction: does it make sense to run away ?

mfg
manu

To clarify:

1) Is the wall infinitely wide as well, or does it have a finite width?
2) Is the mass density of the wall uniform, or is it distributed in such a way that the wall has finite mass?
 
The wall would never fall over, you could live your life with it falling and would never complete the fall. The top of it would be not be going faster than the speed of light, so even if it was, it would take an astronomical number of astronomical numbers of years to actually complete the fall.

Uhh. No. It would never be able to fall. There is no amount of time at any speed where traveling an infinite distance is possible.

Obviously no such wall can exist, so the question poses a lot of problems, it's really a paradox.

the point was that the infinite part actually was a number and did not go on forever. To us it would be an infinite distance, but it could stop, we just don't know yet. That was the point I was getting across. Of course, it is impossible to have an infinite distance between two things.
 
hi,

there were no assumptions at the beginning when i discussed this with some friends, so theres no answer that is wrong or right...

back to physics....

and the example of the muons hitting the surface of the earth:

while the particles accelerated in the LHC "only" will have the energy of a moving fly, we detect particles in the cosmic radiation, that have energies which compare to a really hard served tennis ball ;)

mfg
 
Last edited:
hahaha, this thread is hillarious ;)
after 3 years of studying physics i know that some things are hard to believe if you hear them for the first time, but u'll get used to it ;)

heres sth to think about:
imagine a wall with an infinite height falls over in your direction: does it make sense to run away ?

mfg
manu

To clarify:

1) Is the wall infinitely wide as well, or does it have a finite width?
2) Is the mass density of the wall uniform, or is it distributed in such a way that the wall has finite mass?

I suppose my mind instantly steers toward the logic in things as opposed to physics... Of what material is this wall composed? I don't think I would run away from a wall composed entirely of silly string.
 
hahaha, this thread is hillarious ;)
after 3 years of studying physics i know that some things are hard to believe if you hear them for the first time, but u'll get used to it ;)

heres sth to think about:
imagine a wall with an infinite height falls over in your direction: does it make sense to run away ?

mfg
manu

To clarify:

1) Is the wall infinitely wide as well, or does it have a finite width?
2) Is the mass density of the wall uniform, or is it distributed in such a way that the wall has finite mass?

I suppose my mind instantly steers toward the logic in things as opposed to physics... Of what material is this wall composed? I don't think I would run away from a wall composed entirely of silly string.
i am sure you would if it would kill you, if it's 20000000 feet thick, it would probably kill you if it happened to land on you.
 
There was a test that was made to prove that time slow down when you go at very high speeds.

It was this - -

= = Get 2 clocks (set at exactly the same times)

= = Put one on a jet and one on the ground

= = Make the jet (with the clock) fly really fast...and stuff:D

= = Come back and.....one clock is a few seconds ahead/behind!!
:cool:
 
Back
Top