Lorentz contraction

The Lorentz contraction, also called Length contraction, Fitzgerald contraction or Lorenz-Fitzgerald contraction, is the phenomenon that a moving object becomes shorter than it was when measured in its rest frame. This is because of relativistic effects seen between observers moving toward or away from one another. The size of one object as seen by someone moving toward or away from it it is decreased along their line of movement by an amount mathematically related to their speed and the speed of light.

In his book, One, Two, Three...Infinity, physicist George Gamow quoted a limerick (a kind of poem) that is said by some to have been changed from a more naughty poem. There are several other cleaned up versions:

There once was a young man named Fisk,
Whose fencing was extremely brisk,
So fast was his action,
The Lorentz contraction,
Foreshortened his foil to a disk.

Lorentz Contraction Media

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  In special relativity, the observer measures events against an infinite latticework of synchronized clocks.

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  Minkowski diagram of Einstein's 1911 thought experiment on length contraction. Two rods of rest length A' B' = A B = L_0 are moving with 0.6 c in opposite directions, resulting in A^\ast B^\ast

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  Formula on a wall in Leiden, Netherlands. Lorentz was chair of theoretical physics at the University of Leiden (1877-1910).

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  Cuboids in Euclidean and Minkowski spacetime