If the doors are too soft and the pole is able to penetrate through them both observers will agree that the barn won t get caught and will continue to move.
Relativity barn door paradox.
To a stationary observer due to the contraction the moving ladder is able to fit entirely.
The pole and barn paradox is a classic demonstration of the breakdown of universal simultaneity in special relativity.
And clearly there s enough room if i do it quickly enough very very quickly.
The pole and barn paradox ladder and garage paradox.
Here s the thought experiment.
Einstein s theory of special relativity makes several predictions some of which seem counter intuitive.
My barn is 8 meters long your pole is 8 meters long.
You run into the barn with the pole.
Barney stands beside a barn with doors open at both ends.
It involves a ladder parallel to the ground travelling horizontally at relativistic speed and therefore undergoing a lorentz length contraction.
Just as you get inside the barn okay or not just as you get inside but as you get all the way inside the barn so your pole reaches the back door i will close both doors simultaneously.
From the farmer s viewpoint the doors may get closed simultaneously but simultaneity is relative in relativity so in the pole s reference frame the front door closes before the rear door does.
If the person runs sufficiently fast enough the pole will contract according to the observer on the ground frame of reference which we ll call s like the textbook does in length according to the lorentzian transformations so that it will be short enough to fit inside the barn.
Is the symmetry of length contraction paradoxical.
You have a pole which is exactly as long as the barn at rest.
If it is moving at relativistic speeds the theory of relativity says that it can at l.
The ladder is imagined passing through the open front and rear doors of a garage or barn which is shorter than its rest length so if the ladder was not moving it would not be able to fit inside.
According to relativity in your reference frame the barn is shorter than the pole since it is moving and has relativistic dilation.
The pole barn paradox is a famous variation on the twin paradoxwhich must be addressed with the ideas of simultaneity in relativity.
The pole and barn paradox or the ladder and garage paradox pose the question.
The ladder paradox is a thought experiment in special relativity.
To calculate the times for the two frames of reference consider the pole entering the barn and set t t 0 at that instant and x x 0 to establish.
Polly carries a pole.
When it and the barn are at rest the pole is longer than the barn.
A person carrying a 20 m pole runs at relativistic speeds at a 15 m long barn with doors open on both ends.
The fact that two events are simultaneous in one frame of reference does not imply that they are simultaneous as seen by an observer moving at a relativistic speed with respect to that frame.
One of the classic paradoxes of special relativity is the pole barn paradox.
