I Question on §3 of Einstein's 1905 paper

Brett Oertel
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Hi guys,

This is my first time posting on PF!

I have a question on §3 of Einstein's paper "On the electrodynamics of moving bodies."My problem is with the following mathematical statements:

img22.gif


Hence, if x' is chosen to be infinitesimally small,

img23.gif


or

img24.gif
I have just finished high school, and whilst I have finished two other books which concerned Special Relativity (and understood them well) I think I do not know enough maths to understand what i pasted above. Could someone explain how he gets from step 1 to step 2 please?
Or, perhaps could someone tell me what topics in calculus I must learn in order to understand it myself?

Thanks!

EDIT: I found many other threads asking the exact same thing as me... Oops! I managed to derive it on my own so no answer is necessary :).
 
Last edited:
Physics news on Phys.org
Brett Oertel said:
Oops! I managed to derive it on my own so no answer is necessary :).

Mind posting the derivation so others can see how it was done?
 
OK, so this has bugged me for a while about the equivalence principle and the black hole information paradox. If black holes "evaporate" via Hawking radiation, then they cannot exist forever. So, from my external perspective, watching the person fall in, they slow down, freeze, and redshift to "nothing," but never cross the event horizon. Does the equivalence principle say my perspective is valid? If it does, is it possible that that person really never crossed the event horizon? The...
ASSUMPTIONS 1. Two identical clocks A and B in the same inertial frame are stationary relative to each other a fixed distance L apart. Time passes at the same rate for both. 2. Both clocks are able to send/receive light signals and to write/read the send/receive times into signals. 3. The speed of light is anisotropic. METHOD 1. At time t[A1] and time t[B1], clock A sends a light signal to clock B. The clock B time is unknown to A. 2. Clock B receives the signal from A at time t[B2] and...
From $$0 = \delta(g^{\alpha\mu}g_{\mu\nu}) = g^{\alpha\mu} \delta g_{\mu\nu} + g_{\mu\nu} \delta g^{\alpha\mu}$$ we have $$g^{\alpha\mu} \delta g_{\mu\nu} = -g_{\mu\nu} \delta g^{\alpha\mu} \,\, . $$ Multiply both sides by ##g_{\alpha\beta}## to get $$\delta g_{\beta\nu} = -g_{\alpha\beta} g_{\mu\nu} \delta g^{\alpha\mu} \qquad(*)$$ (This is Dirac's eq. (26.9) in "GTR".) On the other hand, the variation ##\delta g^{\alpha\mu} = \bar{g}^{\alpha\mu} - g^{\alpha\mu}## should be a tensor...
Back
Top