Wikisource has original text related to this article: A principle of relativity is a criterion for judging physical theories, stating that they are inadequate if they do not prescribe the exact same laws of physics in certain similar situations. These types of principles have been successfully applied throughout science, whether implicitly (as in Newtonian mechanics) or explicitly (as in Albert Einstein's special relativity and general relativity). Image File history File links Wikisource-logo. ...
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A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ...
The word theory has a number of distinct meanings in different fields of knowledge, depending on their methodologies and the context of discussion. ...
A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Classical mechanics. ...
“Einstein†redirects here. ...
For a less technical and generally accessible introduction to the topic, see Introduction to special relativity. ...
For a less technical and generally accessible introduction to the topic, see Introduction to general relativity. ...
Basic relativity principles Certain principles of relativity have been widely assumed in most scientific disciplines. One of the most wide spread is the belief that any law of nature should be the same at all times; and scientific investigations generally assume that laws of nature are the same regardless of the person measuring them. These sorts of principles have been incorporated into scientific inquiry at the most fundamental of levels. This page is under modification. ...
Special principle of relativity The special principle of relativity states that physical laws should be the same in all inertial reference frames, but that they may vary across non-inertial ones. It has been used in both Newtonian mechanics and Special relativity; for the latter, its influence was so strong that Max Planck named the theory after the principle. In physics, an inertial frame of reference, or inertial frame for short (also descibed as absolute frame of reference), is a frame of reference in which the observers move without the influence of any accelerating or decelerating force. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Classical mechanics. ...
For a less technical and generally accessible introduction to the topic, see Introduction to special relativity. ...
“Planck†redirects here. ...
The principle forces physical laws to be the same in any vehicle moving at constant velocity as they are in a vehicle at rest. A consequence is that an observer in an inertial reference frame cannot determine an absolute speed or direction of their travel in space; they may only speak of their travel relative to some other object.
The principle does not extend this property to noninertial reference frames because those frames do not, in general experience, seem to abide by the same laws of physics -- for example, people often feel fictitious forces when their reference frames accelerate. In the first part of this article, up until the section on general relativity, the words and expressions are used with their daily life meaning in mind, and they should be read as such. ...
In Newtonian mechanics -
The special principle of relativity was first explicitly enunciated by Galileo Galilei in 1639 in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, using the metaphor of Galileo's ship. In general, the principle of relativity is the requirement that the laws of physics be the same for all observers. ...
Galileo redirects here. ...
Frontispiece and title page of the Dialogue The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo) was a 1632 book by Galileo, comparing the Copernican system, and the traditional Ptolemaic system. ...
Galileos Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems considers all the common arguments against the idea that the Earth moves. ...
Newtonian mechanics added to the special principle several other concepts--various laws and an assumption of an absolute time. When formulated in the context of these laws, the special principle of relativity states that the laws of physics are invariant under a Galilean transformation. The absolute time is a hypothetical time that either runs at the same rate for all the observers in the universe or the rate of time of each observer can be scaled to the absolute time by multiplying the rate by a constant. ...
The Galilean transformation is used to transform between the coordinates of two reference frames which differ only by constant relative motion within the constructs of Newtonian physics. ...
In special relativity -
In the late 19th century, Henri Poincaré suggested that the principle of relativity holds for all laws of nature. Joseph Larmor and Hendrik Lorentz discovered that Maxwell's equations, the cornerstone of electromagnetism, were invariant only by a certain change of time and length units. This left a big amount of confusion among physicists, many of whom thought that a luminiferous aether is incompatible with the relativity principle. For a less technical and generally accessible introduction to the topic, see Introduction to special relativity. ...
Jules Henri Poincaré (April 29, 1854 – July 17, 1912) (IPA: [1]) was one of Frances greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists, and a philosopher of science. ...
Sir Joseph Larmor (11 July 1857 – 19 May 1942), an Northern Irish physicist, mathematician and politician, researched electricity, dynamics, and thermodynamics. ...
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (July 18, 1853, Arnhem – February 4, 1928, Haarlem) was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and elucidation of the Zeeman effect. ...
For thermodynamic relations, see Maxwell relations. ...
Electromagnetism is the physics of the electromagnetic field: a field which exerts a force on particles that possess the property of electric charge, and is in turn affected by the presence and motion of those particles. ...
The luminiferous aether: it was hypothesised that the Earth moves through a medium of aether that carries light In the late 19th century luminiferous aether (light-bearing aether) was the term used to describe a medium for the propagation of light. ...
In their 1905 papers on electrodynamics, Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein explained that with the Lorentz transformations the relativity principle holds perfectly. Einstein elevated the (special)principle of relativity to an axiom of the theory and derived the Lorentz transformations from first principles. They discarded the notion of absolute time and required the speed of light in a vacuum to be the same for all observers, regardless of their motion or the motion of the source of the light. The latter was demanded by Maxwell's equations, which imply the general invariance of the speed of light in a vacuum. For other uses, see 1905 (disambiguation). ...
Einstein, in 1905, when he wrote the Annus Mirabilis Papers The Annus Mirabilis Papers (from Latin, Annus mirabilis, for extraordinary year) are the papers of Albert Einstein published in the Annalen der Physik Scientific journal in 1905. ...
“Einstein†redirects here. ...
The Lorentz transformation (LT), named after its discoverer, the Dutch physicist and mathematician Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928), forms the basis for the special theory of relativity, which has been introduced to remove contradictions between the theories of electromagnetism and classical mechanics. ...
The speed of light in a vacuum is an important physical constant denoted by the letter c for constant or the Latin word celeritas meaning swiftness.[1] It is the speed of all electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, in a vacuum. ...
Look up Vacuum in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
For other uses, see Light (disambiguation). ...
The strength of special relativity lies in its derivation from simple, basic principles, including the invariance of the laws of physics under a shift of inertial reference frames. (See also: Lorentz covariance.) It has been suggested that Covariant transformation be merged into this article or section. ...
In physics, an inertial frame of reference, or inertial frame for short (also descibed as absolute frame of reference), is a frame of reference in which the observers move without the influence of any accelerating or decelerating force. ...
In physics, Lorentz covariance is a key property of spacetime that follows from the special theory of relativity, where it applies globally. ...
General principle of relativity The general principle of relativity states that physical laws are the same in all reference frames -- inertial or non-inertial. An accelerated charged particle might emit synchrotron radiation, though a particle at rest doesn't. If we consider now the same accelerated charged particle in its non-inertial rest frame, it emits radiation at rest. General Electric synchrotron accelerator built in 1946, the origin of the discovery of synchrotron radiation. ...
Physics in non-inertial reference frames was historically treated by a coordinate transformation, first, to an inertial reference frame, performing the necessary calculations therein, and using another to return to the non-inertial reference frame. In most such situations, the same laws of physics can be used if certain predictable fictitious forces are added into consideration; an example is a uniformly rotating reference frame, which can be treated as an inertial reference frame if one adds a fictitious centrifugal force and Coriolis force into consideration. See Cartesian coordinate system or Coordinates (elementary mathematics) for a more elementary introduction to this topic. ...
In the first part of this article, up until the section on general relativity, the words and expressions are used with their daily life meaning in mind, and they should be read as such. ...
A rotating frame of reference is a coordinate system that describes how physics appears when measured against a hypothetical network of rigid rulers extending from a rotating body. ...
Centrifugal force (from Latin centrum centre and fugere to flee) is a term which may refer to two different forces which are related to rotation. ...
In physics, the Coriolis effect is an inertial force first described by Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis, a French scientist, in 1835. ...
The problems involved are not always so trivial. Special relativity predicts that an observer in an inertial reference frame doesn't see objects they'd describe as moving faster than the speed of light. However, in the non-inertial reference frame of Earth, treating a spot on the Earth as a fixed point, the stars are observed to move in the sky, circling once about the Earth per day. Since the stars are light years away, this observation means that, in the non-inertial reference frame of the Earth, anybody who looks at the stars is seeing objects which appear, to them, to be moving faster than the speed of light. This article is about Earth as a planet. ...
Since non-inertial reference frames do not abide by the special principle of relativity, such situations are not self-contradictory. Broadly speaking, a contradiction is an incompatibility between two or more statements, ideas, or actions. ...
General relativity -
General relativity was developed by Einstein in the years 1907 - 1915. General relativity postulates that the global Lorentz covariance of special relativity becomes a local Lorentz covariance in the presence of matter. The presence of matter "curves" spacetime, and this curvature affects the path of free particles (and even the path of light). General relativity uses the mathematics of differential geometry and tensors in order to describe gravitation as an effect of the geometry of spacetime. Einstein based this new theory on the general principle of relativity, and he named the theory after the underlying principle. For a less technical and generally accessible introduction to the topic, see Introduction to general relativity. ...
Year 1907 (MCMVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ...
Year 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday[1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ...
In quantum field theory, a global symmetry is any symmetry of a model which is not a gauge symmetry. ...
In physics, Lorentz covariance is a key property of spacetime that follows from the special theory of relativity, where it applies globally. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
This article is about matter in physics and chemistry. ...
For other uses of this term, see Spacetime (disambiguation). ...
In mathematics, curvature refers to a number of loosely related concepts in different areas of geometry. ...
In mathematics, differential topology is the field dealing with differentiable functions on differentiable manifolds. ...
In mathematics, a tensor is (in an informal sense) a generalized linear quantity or geometrical entity that can be expressed as a multi-dimensional array relative to a choice of basis; however, as an object in and of itself, a tensor is independent of any chosen frame of reference. ...
Gravity redirects here. ...
For other uses, see Geometry (disambiguation). ...
For other uses of this term, see Spacetime (disambiguation). ...
See also For a less technical and generally accessible introduction to the topic, see Introduction to special relativity. ...
The special theory of relativity was first put forward by Einstein in 1905[1]. His aim was to take care of some theoretical concerns about classical electrodynamics, but ultimately he came up with a modification of the laws of mechanics itself. ...
For a less technical and generally accessible introduction to the topic, see Introduction to general relativity. ...
Newton’s conception and quantification of gravitation held until the beginning of the 20th century, when Albert Einstein extended the special relativity to form the general relativity (GR) theory. ...
In general, the principle of relativity is the requirement that the laws of physics be the same for all observers. ...
This is a list of important publications in physics, organized by field. ...
References and links See the special relativity references and the general relativity references. For a less technical and generally accessible introduction to the topic, see Introduction to special relativity. ...
For a less technical and generally accessible introduction to the topic, see Introduction to general relativity. ...
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