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Old 10-21-2007, 06:06 AM
mduane9859
 
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Default A man is standing on an uncovered train car and the train is traveling towards LA at 50mph.?

The man begins to run forward (towards LA) at 10mph.
1. How fast is the man traveling in relation to the train....as he is running?
2. How fast is the man traveling towards LA......as he is running?
3. If highway Patrol shot the man with a radar gun as he was running, what would the approximate speed reading be?
Those of you who think that he is traveling no faster than the train......(as he is running)......please explain this also.
He actually will reach his destination (LA) sooner than the spot that he began the trip on (for instance, the back of the train car). How can he reach the destination before his original spot without having traveled faster than that spot at some point in time?
I dont mean to make this more complicated than it should be but similar questions have been asked and none of the answers I found satisfied me.
Thanks
OK hopeless, we are not negotiating so enough of the answering with questions. I think we all know I'm am asking this in theory....not literally. The man is on the bed of the train....not on "top" of the train.....dont be silly.... just try to contribute something intelligent to the post.
Random: ok lets forget about the universal perspective and bring it back to earth. what would the reading on the radar gun be if hiway patrol shot the man with it from the ground as the train approached him.
Also, if you placed an X at the rear of the train (where he starts) and a Y at the front (where he stops), onced the train reaches LA, if the man is atnding on the Y that would have to mean that he travelled a further distance than the X in the same amount of time. There is NO argument about that......its fact. How can this be without him traveling faster than the train at some point during the trip?
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Old 10-21-2007, 06:12 AM
hopelessmagic
 
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I'm still stumped as to how he's defying gravity. You said it's an uncovered train car and he's 'on' it? I'd hope he'd be in it instead of hovering in mid-air like that.

Also, he can run 10 mph?? Is he the next bionic man or something? This entire question is just whacked.
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Old 10-21-2007, 07:31 AM
Random R
 
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For the purposes of the question of how fast the man is moving, the train is a stationary frame of reference. It's no different from the fact that the train is only moving 50 mph despite moving along the surface of a planet that is spinning much faster than that. So the reason the man isn't moving faster than the train is because the train is considered "stationary" in terms of calculating the man's motion just as the earth's surface is considered stationary for calculating the train's motion. Privileged frames of reference are common in physics.

As for how fast he is traveling toward L.A., one must remember that he cannot arrive any sooner than the train, and one cannot simply keep adding on accelerations (per Einsteinian physics.)
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Old 10-21-2007, 09:10 PM
Mike M
 
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this as theory should not be difficult
1)10mph
2)10mph plus speed of train
3) 10mph plus speed of train
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