Re: Speed and mass

Koobee Wublee wrote:
"Tom Roberts" <tjroberts137@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:XCMeg.88207$H71.58022@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Most physicists today, when they say "mass" without qualifier, mean the
invariant mass of an object.

The age-old debate of how to interpret mass is subject to how you model
the physical world around you

Yes.


If I model mass as invariant, I have to fill in my equations describing
how this mass interacts with its suroundings with extra terms such as
(1 / sqrt(v^2 / c^2)). However, if I model mass as merely an observed
quantity dependent on who and where the observer is, the other argument
for mass becomes very clear and makes more sense.

Obviously you have never done this. As I said before:
>> Your m
>> above is normally called "relativistic mass"; it is really an
>> anachronism, and it does not appear explicitly in any modern theory
>> of physics; the invariant mass appears in many places in every modern
>> theory of physics.

You are wrong -- invariant mass makes the equations of theoretical physics simpler. At base this is so because the equations themselves must be Lorentz invariant (locally).


Tom Roberts
.

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