[WikiEN-l] [roy_q_royce at hotmail.com: --A Request RE a WIKIArticle--]

[Jimmy Wales]

Well, see my other email.  I don't really care about the physics of
the matter.  Does this proof of yours appear in any standard text?  If
so, cite that text and include the conclusion as appropriate.

If not, then it's original research, right or wrong, and it doesn't
belong in the central treatment of the subject on wikipedia.

Just to show you that I read what you wrote, I have some questions,
below.  But, please don't respond on the list, because this list is
really for questions of wikipedia policy, not physics.

> You have assumed that you could not have anything helpful to say
> about the physics of this situation, so you have also assumed that
> it cannot be simply explained if one tries hard enough!

Actually, I assumed neither.  Really, the actual *content* of the
article is of little interest to me, outside of our following standard
wikipedia procedures.

> Everyone agrees that special relativity (SR) has some sort of
> mass increase,* just as everyone agrees that SR has some sort of
> time dilation and some sort of rod contraction. The question is,
> What is physically happening in these three cases?
> [* a minor technical point, it's really a momentum (which is simply
> mass x velocity) increase]

You already lost me here.

> Picture a single, normally-operating atomic clock that is sitting
> on a stationary table some where. (In "tech talk," it is continuously
> at rest with respect to an inertial frame).

I don't know what an atomic clock is, and I'm having trouble
visualizing a stationary table.  All my tables are moving, rotating
with the earth, going around the sun, and what not.

> Note the fact that this clock cannot have more than one atomic
> (internal, time-keeping) rhythm. (A clock that had two or more
> different "tick rates" would have to be thrown away!)

O.k.

> Note the fact that observers in different SR frames will find
> many "different rhythms" for this clock. (Indeed, in SR, one and
> the same clock has an infinite number of "different rhythms.")

You lost me there.  I don't know what an "SR frame" is.

> Reach the unavoidable conclusion that SR's "time dilation" does
> not pertain to a clock's intrinsic (atomic, in this case) rhythm.
> 
> Step 5:
> Apply this same argument to the other two cases (i.e., to the
> momentum and rod contraction cases), and similarly reach the
> equally unavoidable conclusion that SR does not pertain to either
> intrinsic mass or to intrinsic rod length.

O.k.

> At this point, although we have not answered our original question

Except, for me, I have not even understood the original question.

--Jimbo