Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Chapter 2 Part 2
From Newton's perspective, you can contemplate the world from any vantage point that you can think of, but not all of them are equal. In that, one of these perspectives is more right than the other. That perspective being that of absolute space. Later in the chapter it is stated that to determine who is truly moving you must observe the effects of that motion. The book uses the example of a skater twirling in an arena. If the skater is turning then the skater will feel their arms pulling outward towards the rest of the universe, while if the arena was spinning the skater would not feel their arms pulled towards the empty universe. Additionally the chapter states that in an empty universe you would not feel your motion. The theorist who stated this is Mach. In other words you will only feel acceleration when you accelerate relative to the speed of the universe.
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How can you move in an empty universe? If there is nothing, how can you move forward or back? Your muscles have nothing to push off of. I'm not asking this to be a bum, I'm genuinely curious.
ReplyDeleteExactly, if you are in an empty universe then you are the universe, the only thing your muscles could push off of is you, and all motion would be relative to your own thereby making no net motion ever occurring.
DeleteWow that's actually really cool so if you're on another planet you can only feel speed if you accelerate the universe's speed?
ReplyDeleteYou always only fell motion relative to that of the universe, regardless of where you are in the universe.
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