I have enjoyed the mass thread. Perhaps all important
points have already been made but I’d like to provide a few
sources which might be helpful. It seems that *relativistic
mass* is well and alive only in some high school and
introductory books. Granted, Feynman used the idea in his
famous lectures but they were given in the early sixties.
So here are the sources I promised:
1) Taylor, E. and Wheeler, J. (1992). “Spacetime Physics”,
especially pp. 246 – 251 (Dialog: use and abuse of the
concept of mass). I believe that this book is a real
classic.
2) Okun, L. (1989). “The Concept of Mass”, Physics Today,
June, pp. 31-36. (I haven’t read this myself but it is
highly recommended by Taylor & Wheeler).
3) Adler, C. (1987). "Does mass really depend on velocity,
dad?", American Journal of Physics 55 (1987), 739.
There is an interesting and perhaps a bit sad story behind
the title. Adler shows that there is no unique meaning for
relativistic mass in the framework of relativity.
4) David Bowman’s excellent posting in PHYSHARE list on Wed, 13 Oct 1999 (Re: Heresy? (long)). It can be retrieved
by typing “Heresy?” to the “Search for” field and “Bowman”
to the “author’s address” field. Unfortunately, you must
first sign in the list since it is password protected.
Antti Savinainen, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer in Physics and Mathematics
Kuopio Lyseo High School
Finland
E-mail: <antti.savinainen@kuopio.fi>
Website: <http://kotisivu.mtv3.fi/physics/>