You are riding in a spaceship that has no windows, radios, or othermeans for you

Question

You are riding in a spaceship that has no windows, radios, or othermeans for you to observe or measure what is outside. You wish todetermine if the ship is stopped or moving at constant velocity.What should you do?
A.) You can determine if the ship is moving by determine theapparent velocity of light (I think it might be this one but I'mnot sure and don't have proper reasoning.)
B.) you can determi if the ship is moving by checking you precisiontime piece. If it's running slow, the ship is moving.
C.) you can determine if the ship is moving either by determiningthe apparent velocity of light or by checking your precision timepiece. If it's running slow, the ship is moving.
D.) You should give up because you taken on an impossible task (this made me laugh)

Explanation / Answer

A can't be right because the velocity of light isthe same in all reference frames. If you measure the speed of lightsomehow, it won't tell you anything about your situation. B can't be right because if your "precision timepiece" (like a clock or watch) is moving slow, time is also movingslow for you, and you wouldn't notice. (Slow and fast only makesense if there's someone else in another situation to compare yoursto.) C can't be right because it's basically the sameas saying "A or B," and we've just seen that both A and B arewrong. D has to be right! It's funny, but so isrelativity. A reference frame (like a spaceship without any doorsor windows) moving at constant velocity is inertial --it's not accelerating -- so it's indistinguishable from beingstopped except by comparison with another frame (which isexplicitly forbidden in the problem).

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