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Greg Morgan

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February 16, 2022

Wallballs and Time Dilation

If you’ve been a member of Pittsburgh Fit for more than 5 minutes you probably noticed there is a call on Sunday mornings called Circuit FIT. Led by the Fearless A-Tom! (And by fearless I mean sadistic) These classes are great exercise and also a heck of a lot of fun! Except for one thing… (*ominous Dun Dun DUUuuuuuuunnnnn*)Have you ever noticed while you are juggling a medicine ball during one of these classes that time LIIIIIIITERALLY slows down and often feels like it comes to a complete stop? Well this can be explained by a brief jaunt down what I like to call my memory lane (I took a physics course in college that dove into this kind of stuff and honestly… I don’t remember much of it but i’m going to do my best to explain it easily and understandably)

Back in the day, Isaac Newton figured out that Gravity just straight up works. (What a guy, am I right?) (*clonk * *apple hits head*) Anyway, along comes this other guy, some “einstein” by the name of Albert Einstein. I think he was trying to prove the ironic use of that name wrong by being super smart or something. Anyway, Al’s all like, “Yeah, gravity. Cool. How does it play into all this other stuff? Who care’s, let’s figure out this other jazz…” So he went on to figure out all kinds of fun stuff like the fact that E=MC2 where E= energy, M= mass of an object, and C= the speed of light (a.k.a. buggeringly fast). This is known as the theory of General Relativity.

Ok there is a more fun equation that he described as “Special Relativity!” (OOOOOoooo, AAAaaaaahhhh) This rule pertains to specific situations that involve incredibly large masses or insanely fast speeds such as those bloody medicine balls… OK here it is! The equation!

So! t’ is the changed time, t is the normal time, v is the velocity of an object and c is again, the speed of light.

So if i take an object, like a tennis ball, and i throw it at some magnificent speed (because i’m suuuuper super strong) like 99% the speed of light. That would make the bottom on the equation the square root (Sq.Rt.) of (1-(0.99c2/c2)) the c2 values cancel out leaving just Sq.Rt. (1-0.99) or 0.01. The Sq. Rt. of 0.01 is 0.1. (0.1 x0.1 = 0.01, trust me. I used a calculator. Like… twice)

THUS! We are left with an equation that reads t’= t/0.1 so to calculate for t, we multiply both sides by 0.1 that results in 0.1t’ = t and if you know math that means that the changed time is 1 tenth of real time. Make sense? Did I lose anyone? I can write it on the board in class if anyone wants to see it. But to make a long story short… as the speed of an object increases the relative rate of time slows down. THEREFORE! Juggling a medicine ball LITERALY slows down time and that will be the LONGEST 40 seconds of your life. Boom. Scienced.

(Disclaimer: If you actually have a degree in physics you’ll probably be like “yeah, well, that’s only in the relative frame of reference and only the medicine ball would perceive the dilated time gap where you as the stationary bystander would only see them medicine ball change in size due to the length contraction properties of special relativity, but what do I know? I’m only a physicist, not a brain surgeon.“ … *eye roll emoji* ugh beat it, nerd)

Greg Morgan

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