Monday, January 13, 2020

special relativity - A simple coordinate transformation


I'm currently taking my first shot at reading Einstein's 'On The Electrodynamics' (with plenty of mathematical background). With a few pictures, everything has been crystal clear to my intuition, up till:



If we place x=xvt, it is clear that a point at rest in the system k must have a system of values x,y,z, independent of time.




This is, of course, talking about the scenario in which a coordinate frame k is moving at constant velocity along the positive x-axis of a stationary frame K. I would imagine that a point at rest in k would have coordinates (x+vt,y,z), and all my intuition says that we should set x=x+vt in order to have the stationary point in k become (x,y,z). What exactly is wrong with this logic?



Answer



The point at rest in k moves as (x(t),y(t),z(t))=(x0+vt,y,z) in the frame in which k itself moves with v in positive x-direction. Thus, we have to set x(t)=x(t)vt=x0+vtvt to obtain a stationary x(t)=x0 coordinate for a tupel (x,y,z).


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