Recent content by Dan Andersen

Thanks All! These were spectacular answers. I'm surprised to see that this seemingly simple question wasn't definitively settled centuries ago. I expected to find a purely classical straight-forward explanation to the phenomena, but the answer is much more interesting than I anticipated...

Thanks for the input. Let me ask a little different way. I found a wikipedia article that describes the phenomena: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_rotation So it seems that Newton said that there was an absolute point of reference to determine rotation: the fixed stars. Since the stars...

So I understand that in classical physics, movement only makes sense with reference to another body. So my car moves relative to the surface of the road, for example. But it seems that with acceleration, things appear to be more complicated than that. Let's say we have two objects in space...

Hi. I'm a computer programmer / history major in the USA interested in all sorts of things. Kudos on the great forum!