Final answer:
You do not see the effects of relativity in everyday life as the conditions necessary for noticing such effects like time dilation and length contraction are typically not met at the speeds and gravitational forces experienced routinely. However, these effects are essential for current technologies like GPS which require exact time measurements and consideration of relativistic principles to function properly.
Step-by-step explanation:
You do not see the effects of relativity in everyday life because the speeds and gravitational forces you experience on a daily basis are not large enough for the effects like time dilation and length contraction to become noticeable. These relativistic effects only become significant when dealing with objects moving at speeds close to the speed of light or under the influence of strong gravitational fields. However, they are crucial in the operation of technologies such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), where precision in time measurements and the acknowledgment of time dilation due to both the relative speeds of satellites and the differences in gravitational potential compared to Earth's surface are vital. Without accounting for these slight variances in time, caused by special and general relativity, essential services like communication, navigation, and even medicine, which depend on GPS, would be highly inaccurate.
For instance, the Global Positioning System, which includes emergency vehicles, package delivery services, electronic maps, and personal navigation, relies on satellites that must communicate with extreme precision. Due to signals traveling at relativistic speeds, corrections for time dilation are essential, or else the GPS coordinates calculated would rapidly become incorrect, leading to the system failing within minutes. This illustrates the practical application of relativistic physics to everyday technology - while the effects might be invisible to us, their influence pervades through critical aspects of modern infrastructure.
Real-World Connections
Situations such as pilots landing airplanes and the use of GPS during drives or hikes require relativity to be taken into account for accurate outcomes. Although the physical phenomena described by Einstein's theory of relativity seem strange to us because we don't directly observe them, they underpin the accurate functioning of these technologies.