Talk:Time dilation

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The clock analogy is confusing because it can suggest mechanical stresses on clocks by such high speeds, and there are simple minded people who confuse clocks with time; but we know clocks are a human device of fairly recent invention. For example, this issue was very important to measuring time at sea where the unstable surface forces that exist there made clocks difficult to operate until the gimbled version was invented in the 18th Century. So it can be easy for the untrained mind to simply dismiss all this as a product of a clock's malfunction due to the stress of speed and not a property of time itself. But if we are to understand this as in fact a product of time itself, then that is a difficult concept for the layperson to grasp since one imagines time as a mental concept, a fixed interval, immutable to variation based on any situational vicissitudes.172.242.248.88 (talk) 19:46, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think we are going to keep the clock analogy. It was used by Einstein repeatedly, including his writing on relativity for the general reader. It relates to the most central idea of relativity. Of the physical elements one might measure, (properties of time, space, matter, energy, gravitation, etc) the speed of light in a vacuum is the only constant. Time, however we measure it is not. The passage of time only appears constant because we repeatedly measure it in one place. This is fundamental, not just an illustration. Of course, how we measure time is incidental. One might use an atomic clock now for critical physical experiments. Einstein explained that the clock analogy was a thought experiment (Gedankenexperiment) to illustrate the point about time being relative.

Time Dilation Gravity Example[change source]

In the article we see an example of Time Dilation due to speed(calculation of 99% speed of light). It would be nice to include a similar example due to Gravity. KOZMOZ88 (talk) 23:36, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Grumble[change source]

The article says 'the observers may be in positions with different gravitational masses'. This is kind-of wrong or unclearly worded. I'm not sure what it is trying to say, but it is the gravitational potential that determines clock speed.80.229.247.11 (talk) 09:33, 23 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]