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Index
22a.Starlight Aberration 22b. Relativity 22c. Flight (1) 22d. Flight (2) 23. Inertial Forces 23a. The Centrifugal Force 23b. Loop-the-Loop 24a.The Rotating Earth 24b. Rotating Frames |
Relativity is beyond the scope of this exposition, but it deserves at least a brief discussion. By Newton's laws, two frames of reference moving with constant velocity relative to each other observe exactly the same physical behavior. There exists no way to tell, which of them is moving and which one is at rest: there is no "absolute rest frame" and no "absolute (constant) velocity. " Everything is relative, and either frame can be chosen as reference benchmark. In the 19th century the laws of electricity and magnetism were discovered, and suggesting that light itself was a related phenomenon, an electromagnetic wave (as is further discussed in the sections about the Sun). But for a while it seemed that by certain subtle effects, electromagnetic forces could distinguish whether a frame was in motion of not. Those effects were hard to verify, and when they were finally tried out, they did not work--they could not tell which system was in motion. |
Next Stop: #22c Airplane Flight
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Author and Curator: Dr. David P. Stern
Mail to Dr.Stern: stargaze("at" symbol)phy6.org .
Last updated: 5-20-2008