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Re: Teaching logic is urgent (the only reasonable transformations)



You have made the same error: combining equations restricted to certain
events and interpreting the result as applying to a wider set of events.
Your "plug and chug" conclusion { t' = (pv + q)t } is applicable only to
events occurring at x' = 0, the origin of the unprimed observer. This is
in compliance with the Lorentz transformation.

As I said in my private e-mail (and on the list) I have no time to
continue this. Your repetitive error is simple and easily understood.
Take a long time out and ponder carefully what your equations mean.

Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pentcho Valev" <pvalev@BAS.BG>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 4:09 AM
Subject: Re: Teaching logic is urgent (the only reasonable
transformations)


| Bob, you are right that /5/ below applies to those events that occur at
x=0 and in
| this sense my argument is inconclusive, but this still does not mean
that the
| x-containing term in Lorentz second equation is legitimate. Let us first
see what
| "event" means. There is at least one case in special relativity in which
"event" is
| reliably defined. For the front of a beam starting at the origin
(x=x'=t=t'=0) and
| moving along the x-axis Einstein postulates (x=ct <-> x'=ct'), i.e. in
this case the
| event is the movement of the front of a beam. To avoid confusion,
further I shall
| deal with the movement of the front of a beam only.
| For a beam starting at the origin and moving along the y'-axis (on
the train)
| we obviously have x' = 0. For x' = 0, Einstein postulates x = vt (in the
track
| frame):
|
| x' = 0 <-> x = vt (/2/ below)
|
| Let us combine this with the system
|
| x' = ax + dt (/1/ below)
|
| t' = px + qt
|
| So we obtain
|
| d = -av (/3/ below)
|
| t' = (pv + q)t