Recent content by westwood

Kinda silly question. I would like to know how to pronounce 'Christoffel'. If I were to take a stab at it, I would guess two syllables 'Christ' (as in 'grist', with a ch as in 'Christopher') and 'offel' as in 'awful'. Am I close?

Thanks for all your responses. I think my problem is that I was trying to compare a trajectory in the cases where it does and does not pass through a gravitational field, when in fact there must be two different trajectories.

I've been trying to learn GR and I've been back and forth through Schutz's first course book. I think I understand the basic principals, but one thing still eludes me: a traveler in free fall travels along the geodesic, the path of longest proper time. If the path between two points passes...