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Professor Sushing
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Another relativity paradox to ponder

Suppose I have a hose pipe connected to a tap. I turn on the tap and water flows out of the other end of the pipe. Now imagine I install two valves at different points along the pipe. Water will flow normally if both valves are open, but not if either one of them is shut. No doubt you can now see where this is going. If the spacing of the valves along the pipe is sufficiently long, and the duration for which the valves are open is sufficiently short, we can always imagine a second reference frame in which at any given time at least one of the valves remains shut, so how can we account for the fact that water flows in that frame even when the valves are not both open? I imagine the resolution is somehow to do with the fact that the flow requires a pressure wave to propagate along the pipe when a valve is opened, but I haven't been able to find a convincing resolution. Has anyone come across an analogous problem before?

Professor Sushing
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