Search results for " spacetime"
showing 4 items of 44 documents
Maxwell’s Equations
2012
The empirical basis of electrodynamics is defined by Faraday’s law of induction, by Gauss’ law, by the law of Biot and Savart and by the Lorentz force and the principle of universal conservation of electric charge. These laws can be tested – confirmed or falsified – in realistic experiments. The integral form of the laws deals with physical objects that are one-dimensional, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional, that is to say, objects such as linear wires, conducting loops, spatial charge distributions, etc. Thus, the integral form depends, to some extent, on the concrete experimental set-up. To unravel the relationships between seemingly different phenomena, one must switch from the integ…
Seeing reality through Einstein's eyes: a teaching proposal for special relativity
2021
The teaching of Special Relativity is still a critical issue not only for students but also for teachers. In this paper, we describe the trial of a learning unit on the Special Relativity topic based on Minkowski's approach through spacetime diagrams, following the results in pedagogical researches in this field. The main innovation of our project consists of a mechanical instrument: it allows to physically and mechanically represent Lorentz’s transformations by hands, exploring the effects of a change of the reference frame. Teachers and students can deal “by eye” with unusual phenomena as the loss of simultaneity, time dilation, length contraction, relativistic addition of velocities and …
A Numbers-Based Approach to a Free Particle's Spacetime
2020
A possibility is proposed to define the proper spacetime of a free nonzerorest- mass m_0 particle based on the connection of its lasting proper time to an open sequence of natural numbers counting de Broglie time periods (h/c^2)(m^(-1)_ 0 ) [see R. Ferber, A Missing Link: What is Behind de Broglie's" Periodic Phenomenon"?, Foundations of Physics Letters 9, 575 (1996)]. It is suggested to define a set of twodirectional intervals of the particle's proper space (proper distances) following the construction of positive and negative integers from the ordered pairs of the natural numbers, which belong to the sequence 1, 2, ..., n defining the elapsed interval of de Broglie time t_n. Corresponding…
Quantum aspects originated by Gravitation: from cosmology to astrophysics
2018
El estudio de campos cuánticos que se propagan en espacio-tiempos clásicos, curvos y dinámicos, ofrece una primera manera de evaluar las consecuencias de la teoría cuántica cuando los fenómenos gravitatorios no son despreciables. Esta es una cuestión importante que debe ser abordada cuando un campo gravitatorio intenso juega un papel principal en la dinámica de un sistema físico, tal como ocurre durante el universo temprano (inflación cósmica) o en la formación de agujeros negros astrofísicos. Una de las características más sorprendentes de esta materia es quizás el hecho de que el cálculo de observables físicos, incluso para campos sin interacción, frecuentemente involucra operadores cuadr…