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Re: What Hath Einstein Writ?



>Nobody is advocating eliminating "rest mass" per se. Only that the
modifier "rest" is superfluous, so it can just be called "mass,"
which is, of course, related to the energy by E=(gamma)mc^2. The
concept of binding energy is safe.

In the usage of _some_ the term "rest mass" is indeed superfluous, but if
one wants to make the physics clear to one's students a distinction between
"rest mass" and "relativistic mass" is very useful.

BTW the idea of relativistic mass is not confined to fast things.

Jim Green
mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen