Quote:
Originally Posted by sjastro
A common misconception about SR. The proton's inertial mass doesn't increase with increasing velocity.
The proton's relativistic mass which is the sum total of the energy of the proton increases as its KE increases. It's inertial mass remains the same.
Steven
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If I may add something here about understanding in a general sense;
Wheeler's famous quote "spacetime tells mass how to move, while mass tells spacetime how to curve" isn't a very accurate statement, but it made a big impact simply because he encapsulated the essence of GR in a single sentence which got the point across to the general public for their understanding (me included)...it had nothing to do with accuracy. Steven's correction about inertial mass may be correct, but it is still convenient to say that there is inertial mass which increases with relative velocity and rest mass which remains constant, simply to avoid confusion and to get the gist before digging deeper.
Take basic chemistry for instance; it can get tricky when there is a need to know the difference between weight and mass. At some point the two words cannot be used interchangeably. And distinctness between the two then brings forth questions about how they are different.
Take that subject even further and we find the need to explain mass in terms of something else, like the varied tardiness/interactiveness of different types of 'stuff' within a Higgs field, and weight being the leveraged tardiness/interactiveness within the Higgs field then being applied within a seperate field, a field of acceleration...and so on it goes getting more and more confusing (I'm at a point now where I don't believe that a Higgs particle exists simply because I do not believe a Higgs field can exist simultaneously with SR..I just can't get my head around it...and that's why I prefer String Theory models).
Although this IS the forum for correcting errors, I must say that without those inaccuracies, people would have little understanding of anything...and to learn the intricacies of every discipline before any visualisation or understanding of the overall concept could take place would mean only a few would see what anything meant at all.
I've use inaccurate statements all the time, simply to get at least some understanding across, as it does help to build intuitive understanding not just academic understanding...intuitive understanding is important; Einstein used intuitive logic successfully to come up with SR even though so many brilliant minds were staring at the exact same pieces of the puzzle...Einstein used the same intuitive logic for GR, saying that even a child could link the similarities between the feeling of an elevator accelerating and how gravity feels. Again, it was staring in the face of everyone!
I just just wanted to point out that academic understanding should be built on some level of intuitive understanding.
LHC has some sucess
... and how much energy required to get a single extremely small mass particle to reach the speed of light?
...as we get near c is it not so that mass etc increases dramatically???..so will these particles still be at home in their huge race track??? or in other words to fit the prediction as to how mass will "grow" as c is approached will our accelerated particles "grow" and if so in what way??
