I was thinking about this problem in my first year of college. It is that we know.. No signal can travel
faster than Light Speed and Newton’s Laws are valid in all reference frames i.e. When
a force applied to a body, no matter how big is, from Newton’s first law the
body will get an acceleration that is equal to a = F / m
Consider a body that is
perfectly rigid i.e. neither incompressible nor stretchable. Assume that the
body has a length of 5*10^8 meters which is more than one light year. It was
also assumed that the experiment is done in vacuum so that there will not be
any external effects. Now a force “F” is applied in “x” direction so that the
body is displaced to a displacement of “dx” in x direction.
From Newton’s
Laws of Motion,
Acceleration in x
direction = Force / mass of the object (M)
a = F/M
The body is considered
to be made of system of particles with infinitesimal mass “dm”. From the Centre
of Mass Principle it is known that the path and the acceleration of the centre
of mass is as same as the path of the point with mass “M” and acceleration “a”.
Centre of Mass of an object that has uniformly distributed mass depends on the
geometry of the object. We choose the object such that its centre of mass lies
in that object.
From calculations we get,
Acceleration of Centre
of Mass = F/M
So, it is sure that
when it is applied an external force F to the object of mass M then the centre
of mass of the object will get an acceleration of magnitude F/M.
From Electrostatics
theory
When an external force
is given to an object like rope, the motion of the rope is can be described as
follows,
Consider that the rope
has the molecules only arranged in linear order. Let’s say 5 molecules.
When the external force is applied, the first molecule will
move in the direction of the force.
Let us take the case of pulling a rope and the
Force Body Diagram of the first molecule is
Only if “ Fext ” is greater than the
net electrostatic attraction or repulsive force on the first molecule due to
all other molecules namely -
“ Felectro-1 ” , the first molecule will get an acceleration
in the direction of “ Fext
” and will move distance "dx".
When the first molecule
is moved through the distance “dx” in x direction, the second molecule will
also move in the “x” direction to maintain the stable configuration.
So the
force on second molecule will increase to“ Fext ” and it will be greater than the net attraction
or repulsive force one second molecule due to all other molecules namely“ Felectro-2 ”
. So, the second molecule will also move by distance “dx”.
Note: The body is
considered to be perfectly rigid so that each molecule will be displaced by
same distance “dx”. And so the external force will be transmitted to each
particle.
In this way, throughout
there will be electrostatic interaction between the molecules. And the
interaction will make the last molecule that is at the other tip of the rope to
move by the same displacement “dx”.
Thus we can explain the
movement with Electrostatics Interaction.
Here comes the
question:
When the same situation
is dealt with the object of such large length like 5*10^8 meters, it comes the
problem.
The problem is,
From Special Theory of
Relativity, “No kind of Electrical interaction can travel faster than Light
Speed”.
But from Newton’s Laws
of Motion, “The object that is the centre of mass of the object should
instantaneously get acceleration
a = F/M and it is
independent of time. The processes are instantaneous. ”.
Which will happen in
real life?
The question is whether
the body will immediately move or not.
If it behaves by
following the Special theory of relativity,
I hope it takes a light year for the person at the other end of the stick to realize that the stick is moved Right?
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