Morph Yourself

 

Material

A digital Camera
A computer with photo processing software.

Photoshop (expensive) or perhaps Photoshop elements.
GIMP  free http://www.gimp.org/
Preview a free image program on MAC 10.5 or later

To Do and Notice

Take an image of yourself and load it into your computer.

Paul Doherty drysuit

Now assume you are in a spaceship moving upward at 0.87c.

Your length will be measured to be L0/g = (1-v^2/c^2)^0.5 = (1-0.87^2)^0.5 = 0.5 of your rest length.

To see how your new length you need to adjust the height of the image without adjusting its width.

In most photo processing applications this will be called image resize or image adjust. You may have to adjust the program to allow you to adjust each axis separately.

In photoshop elements go to Image>resize>image size and make sure the constrain proportions box is unchecked.
In MAC Preview under the tools menu select adjust size.

Then adjust the pixel count for the height to 1/2 its original value

The image above is 256 pixels square. So I need to adjust the height to 128 pixels.

Paul Drysuit 0.5

At higher speeds the image distortion is even more pronounced.

At 0.995c the measured length contracts 0.1 times the original height. So the image is only 26 pixels high.

paul drysuit 0.1

Going Further

Remember this is not how the height appears to a camera it is how it is measured by an array of sensors that gather data and report it to a central location for processing.