Physics > Views from Windows

Look out your bedroom window. What do you see? How would that same scene look from the window of a speeding car, or from an airplane window as you travel higher and higher into the sky? Would your view of the world be the same from each of the different windows?

How you see the world depends on two important things:

where you're looking from
how fast you're moving compared to the speed of light

Now, s t r e t c h your imagination!

What if you could ride on a beam of light? Light can go the universal speed limit: 186,000 miles/second (300,000 kilometers/second)!

What do you think you would see?

Activity Instructions

Use your imagination and picture each scene below in your head.
What would you see?
Then draw how the world would look to you from each of the different windows.
Click on the links to download and print any of the four scenes, OR download the PDF of them all.