Re: Newton's first law

[Bob Sciamanda <trebor@VELOCITY.NET>]

Carl,
Suppose (an absurdity) that Newton's expectations had been realized and
that his physics turned out to be valid ONLY for an observer at absolute
REST.  We would then not count that as a useless model.  We would do
gedanken experiments from the absolute rest frame and add corrections to
account for our absolute motion - in so doing we would (as we do now) have
to fill in the LHS of N2 in order to proceed.

Bob

Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor

----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl E. Mungan" <mungan@USNA.EDU>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 2:25 PM
Subject: Re: Newton's first law


> . . .
> Bob accuses me of trying to use the first law in isolation to find
> inertial frames. Guilty as charged: I thought that was the point of
> N1. Okay, what is N1, as distinct from a special case of N2?
> . . . --
> Dr. Carl E. Mungan, Asst. Prof. of Physics   410-293-6680 (O) -3729 (F)
> U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD 21402-5026     mailto:mungan@usna.edu
>              http://physics.usna.edu/physics/faculty/mungan/