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RE: Piqued #3 - A Crash Course Towards The Speed Of Light
As you speed up, your mass increases and the time you experience slows down.
This is actually wrong. The mass is an intrinsic property of a particle, and it is constant. We are even referring to it as the invariant mass for a good reason: whatever is the reference frame you are calculating it, it is the same.
What you are trying to say (this is a common confusion, don't worry) refers to the so-called relativistic mass, or inertial mass. This inertial mass is jsut a fancy word to discuss the energy of the particle, that depends of the velocity and of the frame. It is given by m = E/c2.
Concerning the issue with the weight of the dog, it is just related to the above. The relativistic mass is just not the true mass of the object.
OK, so the dog has an invariant or resting mass of 20 pounds, and continues to have that resting mass throughout its ordeal.
But as he speeds up he also gains energy, and the increase of that total energy is referred to as inertial mass. But's it really just a measure of the total energy in the dog? So it's incorrect for me to refer to the dogs "mass" increasing when in fact I'm talking about the dogs inertial mass increasing, right?
OK, I've gone ahead and did a substantial edit to fix things. Also, I tried to get onto steemitchat, but it isn't working for me. So let me say again, thank you for taking the time to point out errors like this! It is much appreciated!
That's indeed just a confusion between names given to different masses, in some sense. The inertial mass should just be called the energy. And the latter definitely includes a kinetic component (and thus varies with the velocity). Thanks for clarifying things in your post :)
PS: the steemit chat is down at the moment...
Thank you again. I've got the wormhole one coming up next. I'm going to aim for zero major errors - fingers are crossed :)
Alrighty - I have made the foray into wormholes. I think perhaps it's a bit too dense as it has gotten less love.
I had sent a link in chat as well - but that interface almost never seems to be working - so I'll plop it here too.
https://steemit.com/science/@dber/piqued-4-enter-the-wormhole