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Jan 3, 2023

The Light Clock: How Moving Clocks Run Slow

Posted by in categories: mathematics, physics

If you know anything about special relativity then you probably know that how fast you’re moving has an impact on how quickly time passes for you. What physics gives rise to this effect? Do you need to know some complicated mathematics in order to understand it?

It turns out that this effect, known as “time dilation”, can be very easily derived for a special kind of clock: a light clock. In this video, I consider a light clock moving through space and show how the postulates of special relativity entail that this moving clock runs slow.

Watch the video to learn what the two postulates of Einstein’s Special Relativity are, and why they entail that moving clocks slow down.

Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoyed! Please like and subscribe for more videos on amazing ideas in physics.

Winter Ride by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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