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Re: Inertial frames



On Wed, 1 May 1996, al clark wrote:
...
All mechanics texts I have seen find the effective potential a very
useful tool for studying central forces. Those psuedoforces can be very
handy when applied to isolated systems, but you had better be careful,
because no system is completely isolated.

It is indeed a very useful tool, and a good pedagogical example to
bring up: The effective potential has units [Joule/kg] == [m**2/s**2} and
its gradient gives immediately the real acceleration of a particle
measured relative to the noninertial origin of force (say, a nucleus
or the Sun). So it's a useful tool for computing those accelerations,
and an excellent pedagogical example of a quantity corrected (as
Coriolis taught us) for the fact that you are expressing things relative
to a noninertial frame. However, no pseudo quantities need appear at
all, either in its use or its derivation.


Can't we end this thread? It has been interesting, but it is time to
close it.
...
This showed up under the SUBJECT heading "Black Holes" (I changed the
heading because I believe people ought to have the right to delete
anything they're not interested in reading.)

I don't think you are arguing to end the Black Hole thread, but I may be
wrong. It would really help to keep the SUBJECT lines straight, though,
since I, like most of us, want to delete subjects I'm not interested in.
It would also help if those who are not interested in continuing a thread
would simply stop continuing the thread.

A. R. Marlow E-MAIL: marlow@beta.loyno.edu
Department of Physics PHONE: (504) 865 3647 (Office)
Loyola University 865 2245 (Home)
New Orleans, LA 70118 FAX: (504) 865 2453