A. Questions for Submission

4.1 Einstein's verificationism

  1. Describe Einstein's magnet and conductor thought experiment.
  2. Of the magnet and conductor experiment, Einstein (1905) writes the following:

    "Examples of this sort, together with the unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the 'light medium,' suggest that the phenomena of electrodynamics as well as of mechanics possess no properties corresponding to the idea of absolute rest."

    Evaluate this statement. Is it a good argument? Why or why not?
  3. Verificationism is the view that a sentence is only meaningful if it is either a statement of mathematics, or else experimentally verifiable. Give examples of some statements that are deemed meaningless according to this view. Discuss whether this is a reasonable perspective to take on meaning.
  4. Do you think the statement 'There is no ether' is most likely to be true, false, or meaningless? What would verificationism conclude about this statement?

4.2 E=mc2

The moving train cars below add constant energy to the particle in the middle, leading to an endless increase in momentum.

  1. In pre-relativistic physics, what happens to an object's speed in such a scenario?
  2. How does this change in relativity? Explain the role of E=mc2 in your answer.
  3. The energy in E=mc2 is measured in joules, the mass in kilograms, and the speed of light in meters per second. But the speed of light squared is a very large number: if c = 300 million (meters/second), then c2 is 90 quadrillion (90 times 1015 m2/s2). Suppose we could convert the mass of an H1 Hummer SUV (about 6,000kg) into usable energy. How much energy would you get?

    (Powering the entire world for one year, including all electricity, petrol usage, natural gas, etc., requires about 500,000 quadrillion joules of energy. How many Hummers would this require?)