Today's Attitude:
[Frustrated Physicist]
The Last Bastion of Relativity: Fizeau
After all these years battling Einstein's Relativity, there is one major city that refuses to fall -- The Experiment of Armand Fizeau [1819-1896] on the Entrainment of Light by Water(1851). This experiment was not simple to set up in 1851 (easier now with lasers), but should have had a simple answer/solution. My mentor, Walter Ritz [a reference to whom Einstein cut from his manuscript for his book because he worried about defending himself from those who agreed with Ritz (yes I have a copy of the original)], was not able to crack it by 1909 when he died, and I am now stuck holding the same stick.
Einstein used the experiment to prove that velocities don't add directly (giving immense support to a fundamental unusual result of his theory). Einstein's interpretation of the result was that light will refuse to travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, no matter how fast the speed of the water is. The result was originally based on reading the phase-difference of photons from (roughly) coherent light, using rotating mirrors and peg-wheels.
Alternative solutions that others are satisfied with:- A guy by the name of JG Fox [phys rev letters, 1965] has a proof, but in it, he believe he uses E=mc2 which Mr Fox does not prove outside of relativity -- so I am forced to be skeptical of his solution.
- Curtis Renshaw has a disproof, but it is full of approximations that I can't feel good about.
- There are others, but there is always one thing I don't like about each.
In order to move on with my field calculations (for application), I must get Fizeau's experiment straight - I have no choice. I'm not sure which has surprized me more, the fact that I have not solved the scenario successfully yet, or the 3 different potential mechanisms I invented to fundamentally describe the transmission of light through a substance (Einstein traditionally used the Ether-model to structure transmission theory) -- but I don't believe in the Ether either! :)
If anyone has an idea, I would be greatful for a hint. I've actually been able to get the right answer two or three different ways, but each time, the assumption scheme is no better than Einstein's or anyone else's -- always holes... Like a giant logic sponge,, vaguely verifying everybody,, but never working completely with anybody. Please let me know.
