Tim_Lou Posted November 16, 2004 Report Share Posted November 16, 2004 gamma is the gist of many forumlas in theory of relativity, the idea is that a object has the same speed in the dimension of space-time...(am i right?) i think its brilliant... but where does this idea come from? how would he think that an object in dimensions of space-time would have constant speed? (correct me if any of the statments are wrong...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moonchild Posted November 16, 2004 Report Share Posted November 16, 2004 I believe - and someone correct me if I am wrong - that Einstein came to this conclusion by performing mathematic experiments involving Maxwell's equations of E/M. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim_Lou Posted November 17, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 17, 2004 just found a book in the library explaining the theory of relativity... (wow! a book around the 1966)the process of deriving starts with the paradox that 2 objects with different velocity observe the same C, the distances would be the same... but an observer outisde would see that the distances differ... man... thats really complicated... trying to get the idea.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bo Posted November 17, 2004 Report Share Posted November 17, 2004 the idea of the gamma, origanlly wasn't einstein; Lorentz and Poincarre (independently) came up with this. The beginning point was indeed electromagnetism, which is completely described by Maxwell's equations.Newtonian dynamics has a certain symmetry, galileo invariance, which basicly mean that if we have 2 observers, with a relative speed v, we can translate measurements done by observer 1 to observer 2, by just adding (or substracting)v to all speed measurements. (don't think to hard about this, it is completely trivial from our perspective). However Maxwell's equations aren't invariant under this transformation.Lorentz ad poincarre found that if you take a somewhat modified version of the galileo transformations (one in which time is also changed!), Maxwells equations are invariant. (These transformations are called Lorentz transformations; and they include the gamma). Einstein later found out that the Lorentz transformations aren't a special class of transformations for E/M, but actually apply to all processes. Bo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim_Lou Posted November 17, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 17, 2004 oh... is that the whatever x,y,z,t equation thingy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bo Posted November 18, 2004 Report Share Posted November 18, 2004 probably yes see e.g. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ/ltrans.html Bo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim_Lou Posted November 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 19, 2004 oh, i see, the book that im reading uses beta instead of gamma... : ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tormod Posted November 19, 2004 Report Share Posted November 19, 2004 All Greek to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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