My brain!

[kryptonitemonkey]

Ugh, physics just broke my brain, which is not always all that hard to do, but in this case, is extremely surprising. So anyway, I've been reading the chapter on kinematic motion, and the last bit of it is on how things like velocity are all relative to the observer, i.e. with two people going the same speed it will look like neither is moving to the other. The example they used was someone standing still watching a cop car going 50 shooting a bullet at 300 will appear to the observer as going 350. However, the part that broke my brain is when they described light. They use examples using star trek stuff, like the Enterprise, which just amuses the crap out of me, but anyway, they used the same argument, except having a laser being shot at the speed of light (3x10^8) and the observer in a shuttle craft going 2x10^8. Now logically, the person in the shuttle should measure light relative to his or her own speed as going 1x10^8. The thing is though, no matter how fast the shuttle is going, light will always be measured as going exactly 3x10^8. And apparently anything that goes over about 10% the speed of light starts having crap like this happen. In other words, things like light don't follow the normal laws of physics, or even reason. At least, that's what the book says. It breaks my brain, but in a fun way, so it's not too bad.