We show that starting with the fact that special relativity theory is concerned with a distortion of the observed length of a moving rod, without mentioning if it is a "contraction" or "dilation", we can derive the Lorentz transformations for the spacetime coordinates of the same event. This derivation is based on expressing the length of the moving rod as a sum of components with all the lengths involved in this summation being measured by the observers of the same inertial reference frame.
Categories: physics.gen-ph