If c were slower, a yellow duck boat (inset) moving obliquely toward you might appear green in the front and violet in the back due to the Doppler shift as shown here. The front of the boat is closer to you, so it has a smaller component of velocity directed toward you, and thus is shifted less than the back of the boat. Near the center of the boat, the duck boat’s engine generates heat and infrared light, which is Doppler shifted to the red color seen on the roof of the boat. Length contraction is not so evident in this view because of the effect of the finite “runtime” of light, the term used to indicate that the light from the back of the boat starts from further away, and thus takes longer to get to your eye than the light from the front of the boat. See the...
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December 2017
VISUAL PHYSICS|
December 01 2017
Doppler rainbows
Zachary Sherin;
Zachary Sherin
1
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, Cambridge, MA
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Philip Tan;
Philip Tan
1
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, Cambridge, MA
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Heather Fairweather;
Heather Fairweather
2
Charles Hayden Planetarium
, Museum of Science, Boston, MA
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Gerd Kortemeyer
Gerd Kortemeyer
3
Michigan State University
, East Lansing, MI
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Phys. Teach. 55, 592 (2017)
Citation
Zachary Sherin, Philip Tan, Heather Fairweather, Gerd Kortemeyer; Doppler rainbows. Phys. Teach. 1 December 2017; 55 (9): 592. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.5011851
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