Special Relativity Question?
I understand that at low speeds, time dilation is minute, but….
for a career truck driver who happens to drive 65 miles per hour for 20 total years of the life, how much younger is he compared to someone standing still for his lifetime?
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Tags: Question, Relativity, Special
Trucking Jobs | cdlbjobs February 20, 2010
2 Comments to “Special Relativity Question?”
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By Morningf, February 20, 2010 @ 8:21 am
He would be about 5 milliseconds younger from time dilation effects. He would be about 5 years older from all that driving.
But … a 45 year career is only about 10 years solid of work, at 8 hours per day, 5 days a week, 49 weeks a year.
By odimwitd, February 20, 2010 @ 1:24 pm
Unfortunately you understand less than you believe.
Special relativity is about (roughly speaking) unaccelerated rest frames. Here I’m talking about starting and stopping the truck and about climbing up and down hills – both of which are the fodder for General relativity and I believe will have a more significant effect on two twin clocks after 20 years than just motion at 65 mph on the surface of a sphere.
But, for fun, lets say 65 mph is 0.018 mps and light travels at 186,000 mps and that the time difference is described by t=t0*√(1-v²/c²)
well v²/c² = .0000000000000094 so subtract from one and get
0.999999999999991 then take the square root 0.9999999
or about 1 part in 10 million. since there are 31 million seconds in a year our geriatic truck driver is about 3 seconds younger each year or a whole minute younger after 20 years. Of course the stress of the job ages him (her) by years and years….