zoobyshoe said:
I don't have any problem with this. The reason I did not want to sort out the list of different frames is because you stipulated in the first one that the device worked as claimed and the events in the frame constituted proof. Therefore going through the list and deciding which other frames also proved it worked would have required me to carry a what I take to be fiction from one frame to the rest, which seemed sort of absurd.
Galilean relativity is not just about looking at one and the same thing in different frames. That's pure kinematics. The principle in Galilean relativity resides in that two *different* setups have the *same equations of motion* if they are linked by a galilean transformation.
Having the equations of motion means: knowing how it will behave, mechanically. Knowing what are the functions of time of the coordinates of the different elements of the system under study.
That means that if you know how one setup behaves, there is no doubt as how the second one will behave. In other words, the principle of galilean relativity makes actual predictions about the behavior of a new system (which might not even be built) by knowing how another system behaves. As such, it means that we can be sure about how the not-yet-built system will behave, without even have to build it.
Now, the hardest part is with the galilean boost. People accept this for the other galilean transformations, such as translations and rotations in space, or shifts in time. That was what I wanted to show in the reasoning with Omcheeto. Visibly he already applies the principle of galilean relativity for space transformations (rotations and translations), when he accepts that if it is demonstrated in London, then it will also work in the Mid West. He already applies it for time translations: if it was demonstrated last week, it will also work next week. What some here don't accept, is the boost. It is however part of the same transformation group (the galilean symmetry group).
Let us compare the "genuine" setup in London, and consider the (hypothetical) setup in the Midwest. The claim is that the behavior of the setup in London "will be the same" as the behavior of the setup in the Midwest.
How do we do this ? First, we specify the relevant elements that will exert a force on the cart. These are the floor and the air. Big Ben doesn't matter. The Tower of London doesn't matter. Now, it can be that the wind during the experiment was blowing 10 km/h from east to west in London (call this direction the X-axis). We work in a coordinate frame in which:
-the ground was having velocity 0
-the air was having velocity (10km/h,0,0)
-the cart was having velocity (v_cart,0,0)
The axis Y is going north-south, and the Z-axis is going into the sky.
We want to deduce from this a behavior of the cart in the Midwest.
If the wind is blowing north-south in the midwest, this would have a velocity component in our original frame of (0, 10km/h,0), along the Y-axis. However, the X-axis in london is now almost going into the sky in the midwest, and the Z-axis is going east-west.
This would be true if we were on the equator, but actually the rotation of frames is more complicated. We also take our "origin" at a different point.
We take the "equivalent midwest frame" to be the frame O'X'Y'Z'.
So we used a geometrical rotation, and a geometrical translation to map the positions and directions of the London situation to the "midwest situations".
What was position x,y,z of the cart in the London frame of the London setup, we take it to be the position x',y',z' of the cart in the Midwest frame in the Midwest setup.
We do the same for the air, and the ground, and everything, and we see that we find a 1-1 mapping between an element of the setup in London in coordinates x,y,z in the Oxyz frame, and the corresponding element of the hypothetical setup in the Midwest in coordinates x',y',z' in the O'x'y'z' frame.
The principle of galilean relativity tells us then that what was the result x(t),y(t),z(t) in london will be the same function, but written as x'(t), y'(t),z'(t) in the Midwest.
So all the derivatives will be the same numbers too, hence all the velocities and everything.
Now, a specific property of those derivatives in London, say v = 13 km/h, will be identical in the Midwest frame.
So we don't have to do the experiment in the Midwest. We know how it will behave. Galilean relativity + the result of the London test gives us that.