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| The father of modern physics; originator of special and general theories of relativity |
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| German for ‘thought experiment’; cannot be tested but can lead to the formulation successful theories; ex. Schrodinger’s cat and Einstein’s imagined experiment about chasing a light beam (Special Relativity); |
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| a frame of reference in which every physical law takes the same form as it does in any other inertial frame of reference |
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| Nothing can move faster than the speed of light (which is constant); about 300K km/second |
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| phenomenon described by theory of relativity; two observers in motion relative to one another; from each’s point of view, the other’s clock will be moving slower |
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| When an object is moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light, it will shorten in the direction of its motion; the closer to the speed of light, the shorter the object |
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| whether two events occur at the same time is not absolute, but depends on the observer’s reference frame; special relativity makes absolute simultaneity impossible if events in question are separated in space |
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| Mass-Energy (Equivalence) |
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| all mass can be converted into energy (E=mc^2); there can be massless particles. In Newtonian mechanics, E |
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| three dimensional space fused with time into a four-dimensional continuum as per special relativity |
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| Michelson-Morley Experiment |
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| 1887; attempted to measure the relative motion of the earth and ether by measuring the speed of light in directions parallel and perpendicular to the earth’s motion. The result disproved the existence of the ether, which contradicted Newtonian physics but was later explained by Einstein’s special theory of relativity |
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| late 19th century concept; it was hypothesized that the earth travels through a “medium” of ether that carries light |
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| the mass of a body or system at rest is the sum of the energy in a body or system divided by c^2; the same in all frames of reference |
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