What would happen if you had a lightyear long stick, and you pushed it. Would the other end move as you pushed it, or would it take a year?
In: Physics
It would take much longer than a year. The impulse of pushing on the stick will travel at the speed of sound within the stick, which is probably around 4000 meters per second. So it would take about 74,950 years for the other end of the stick to move.
It would take many, many years. The speed that a shove travels through something is called the speed of sound, and even for something like steel it’s a few kilometers per second. Light speed is 300,000 km/s.
So one light year would take a hundred thousand years or so.
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so if you push it you think the other end would move immediately right but actually it would take time to get there like a whole year. the stick can only transmit the push at the speed of sound in the material so yeah you’d be waiting a while. kinda wild to think about how big the universe is and how slow stuff can be huh
If there was a person in each end and they each pushed toward the other person, what would happen when the pushes met in the middle?
Good Lord…
I have read the already posted and would like to clarify what you are asking…
If you had a stick that was a light-year long and you “moved” it, what would happen?
Many thought experiments like this have been proposed, but they all end up with the same response.
The response is regarding Einstein.
If me and you were fighting with these wooden rods at maybe 50 feet in distance from another, it’s easier to calculate because length, time, and relativity are not a factor in any vacuum.
However, if i suddenly said “how long would it take for the entire rod to react,” then it’s simpler
As much as we would like to believe a flick of the wrist can cause visual instances to happen across our universe, the limiting factor is still distance and relativity.
If you take this scenario grand scale, and wave a wand with such length of being a “year long,” you would then have a wand that acts proportionately to the length and time.
Meaning? If I waved the wand now, and we could somehow see the end of the wand RIGHT NOW, we wouldn’t see it nor experience it move until a light-year from now at the end.
Jesus
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