Re: [Phys-L] The Physics Teacher and relativistic mass

[Carl Mungan <mungan@usna.edu>]

I'm sure I'm going to catch some "heat" for this from the forum, but one
case where I used relativistic mass (although I disguised it as best I
could) was to justify Eq. (2) for the gravitational red(blue)shift of a
photon at the intro physics level​ in the following TPT paper:

https://www.usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/_files/documents/Publications/TPT11.pdf


> > > I will grudgingly concede that in an ivory-tower classroom situation,
> > > it is possible to /select/ a set of problems for which the notion of
> > > velocity-dependent mass gets the right answer.  In this artificial
> > > situation the question of velocity-dependent mass versus invariant
> > > mass becomes a matter of opinion to some extent.  However, the larger
> > > point remains: If you want to integrate the notion of mass with the
> > > rest of physics, and with general relativity in particular, then the
> > > spacetime approach (including invariant mass) is the only reasonable
> > > option.

-- 
Carl E. Mungan, Professor of Physics  410-293-6680 (O) -3729 (F)
Naval Academy Stop 9c, 572C Holloway Rd, Annapolis MD 21402-1363
mailto:mungan@usna.edu     http://usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/