Physics 197 Lecture 27: Synchronizing Clocks

• School: WUSTL
• Department: Physics
• Course: Physics 197
• Professor: Ferrar

Document Summary

Maxwell"s equations of electromagnetism predict that light (which consists of electromagnetic waves) must move with a certain speed c whose value is speci ed by the equations. The speed of light c in a vacuum must be the same in all inertial reference frames. Synchronizing: any method for synchronizing an inertial frame"s clocks should be equivalent to using light ashes to synchronize the clocks assuming that the speed of those ashes is c. In sr units, we avoid the conversion factor by measuring distance in seconds, where. 1 second of distance is the distance that light moves in 1s of time. Spacetime diagram: an important visual aid for displaying the relationship between events. A graph with a vertical time axis and horizontal spacial axes. Events in spacetime correspond to points on such a diagram. !1: the slope of any light- ash worldline will be +/- 1.