Tangran, Inertial Mass and Gravitational Mass

[dom_quixote]

Imagine a tangran puzzle, in which an extra piece "y", identical to piece 'x', is maliciously added.

No matter how hard the player tries, he will never be able to restore the game's original form, that is: a perfect square.

This illustration has a clear purpose:

If gravitational mass and inertial mass are in fact identical, isn't one of them unnecessary?
Will the mass puzzle be finally solved by discarding one of the masses?

 

[vanhees71]

But it's solved with general relativity. Both inertia's and gravity's sources are all kinds of energy, momentum, and stress of matter and radiation. Mass is only one contribution to energy and momentum.

 

[Dale]

Your puzzle has two pairs of identical triangles, if we maliciously removed one then it couldn’t be solved.

Is mass a triangle or a square?

Of course, @vanhees71 is correct that this has already been solved. Mass is only inertial mass. Gravitational mass is no longer anything other than an approximation and hasn’t been for more than a century now. I just wanted to point out that the analogy is not very good.

 

[dom_quixote]

I just wanted to point out that the analogy is not very good.

Local Hidden Quantic Variables also not?

You can prove that men and wolves exist. But you can't prove werewolves don't exist !

 

[topsquark]

Local Hidden Quantic Variables also not?

You can prove that men and wolves exist. But you can't prove werewolves don't exist !

All the werewolves in the movies I've seen (I've never seen one in real life) are significantly larger than in their wolf form than their human form. Therefore they violate conservation of energy and can't exist.

-Dan

 

[Orodruin]

Mass is only inertial mass.

I’d say mass in relativity is only rest energy. The fact that this happens to equal the inertia in an object’s rest frame is a fundamental insight of SR and the conclusion regarding how this translates to gravitational mass in the Newtonian limit a fundamental insight of GR.

 

[vanhees71]

Mass in relativity is only invariant mass. Both the measure of inertia and gravitational interaction strength is energy (or the local version of it, i.e., the energy-momentum-stress tensor of matter and radiation in GR).

 

[dom_quixote]

All the werewolves in the movies I've seen (I've never seen one in real life) are significantly larger than in their wolf form than their human form. Therefore they violate conservation of energy and can't exist.

-Dan

If philosophizing is allowed on this forum, I must say this is the breaking point between creationism and conservationism.

 

[berkeman]

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