Sunday, November 6, 2016

relativity - Relation between coordinates and frames of reference


I always get a little uneasy that all the theories I can think of (at least since Newton) are constructed in a way such that they would be true in heaven and on earth ... but we can never go everywhere and test it out.


So here is the question:




Is there some good justification to implement something like the principle of relativity in scientific theories other than it turned out to work good so far?



Some more motivation:


We have an understanding of different places in space (and time) and what different velocities are. Like imagine me and my droogs cruising our skateboards down the neighborhood and there is a truck driving in the other direction. I see a cactus on the roadside and I wonder how the trucker in his ride sees it.



Now in the maths, space $\vec x$ and spacetime $t$ represent physical space and physical time. And if I know my coordinates, the form of the plant and its location and orientation in space, I can find out what I see and also what the trucker from his position sees. A coordinate transformation (replacing some letter on a piece of paper with some other letters in a systematic way) is conventually interpreted as taking the data from one "perspective" and transforming it into "another perspecitive".


It's supposed to be a fruitful approach to physics to consider only the observable quantities. Maybe I interpret the principle of relativity the wrong way, but I find it funny that a theory tells me there are spacetime events where I can never get to (outside the light cone). And simultaneously I'm guaranteed that if I'm there I would also be able to physics and come to the right conclusions. At the very least, I feel this is somewhat redundant - why not drop it?




No comments:

Post a Comment

classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...