Recent content by chaah

It's hard to know the best way to put it. It might be better to say that Einstein showed a way of understanding what a gravitational "force" actually is and how it comes about. (Newton had virtually no analysis of a "force", you see.) The main thing here is that a gravitational "force" is not to...

Ya, know what you mean, your question is quite understandable actually. In fact, those popular diagrams that illustrate the effect of curved spacetime can be misleading. They depict something like a trampoline, in the center of which rests a heavy ball ("the sun"), which causes a depression in...

"Push" is a Newtonian concept, eep. In Einstein's way of thinking, talk of "curved spacetime" is meant to replace talk of "pushes" (or "forces"). So the reason why your object moves is because the spacetime around it is curved. If you like, the curved spacetime is what "pushes" it to move, but...

Yes that doesn't satisfy me. I was looking for an answer directly in terms of the mechanics of a see-saw. But it helps, thanks, I guess I need to figure out how a see-saw works. There are tons of problems of this sort (which on the surface present a contradiction in SR) but resolve themselves...

Ok that's cool, you can anyone else help me out a little more? So the second man will see one end of the see-saw bend down (when the first ball hits) but will not see the other end bend up. (The see-saw will not tilt, in that sense.) The reason being that, when one end goes down, there is a...

In the middle of a train carriage, there is a light source with a switch. At each end of the carriage, there is a simple apparatus which, when struck by light, releases a ball vertically onto the floor of the carriage. At the floor is a see-saw, with ends vertically beneath the falling balls. So...