Re: Apparent weight

[David Bowman <dbowman@tiger.gtc.georgetown.ky.us>]

Regarding A. R. Marlow's comments about "real" and "fictitious" forces:
> ...
> I would only add to Hestenes' analysis that real forces can be
> distinguished by the fact that they can do useful work, while anyone who
> tried to market fictitious "forces" for the same purpose should be labeled
> a fraud or a quack.  ...

Try telling this load to the stockholders, executives, and customers of the
electric utilities that operate the many hydroelectric dams along the
Columbia River in Washington State (and to all the other electric utilities
worldwide that produce the power they sell by the action of falling water).

The use by physicists of the words 'real' and 'fictitious' for distinguishing
forces resulting from physical interactions from forces resulting from the
acceleration of a reference frame is a semantic gimmick not all that unlike
the use by mathematicians of the words 'real' and 'imaginary' for 
distinguishing the parts of complex numbers.  We should *not* take such
identifications as seriously as A. R. seems to have taken them.

David Bowman
dbowman@gtc.georgetown.ky.us