Abstract
In the first three chapters, we saw which effects steady, straight motion has on space, time, and mass. The part of the theory of relativity dealing with these phenomena is the theory of special relativity. Now we go one step further and allow the speed to change with time, that is, we allow for acceleration. The simplest case is rotation with constant speed, as on a merry-go-round. Then school-geometry ceases to be true, because rods shrink differently in different directions. Clocks act even more weird, leading to the famous twin paradox, which we explain in detail. Because space itself bends for us when we accelerate, space depends on time via the changing speed, and becomes space-time: For example, the “shortest path between two points in space” of school geometry has no more any definite meaning.
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- 1.
You can download the original paper here: http://cds.cern.ch/record/929453/files/ep63_001.pdf. Their γ is our γ −1.
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© 2013 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Fischer, K. (2013). Acceleration and Inertia. In: Relativity for Everyone. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00587-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00587-4_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-00586-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-00587-4
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