Re: "Is There a Force of Gravity?"

Mike wrote:
"Ficticous" has no place in physics.

Except that it _IS_ used. Because the various "fictitious forces" were invented to maintain the FICTION that Newton's laws are valid in various accelerated coordinates. In GR this all becomes completely untenable....


Force is just a definition. How can a definition be "real" or
"ficticious"?

How can a mere "definition" be the equations of motion?

As JanPB points out, for a spring one must define a force F=kx, completely independent of what you think is a "definition".

And when I push on this ball, I feel a FORCE on my hand, not merely some disembodied "acceleration".

While in some interpretations of Newtonian mechanics one can say F=ma is a definition, there are clearly other possible interpretations with other definitions (e.g. "a push or a pull", to quote a famous one).

And, as I point out in another post in this thread, the world is NOT Newtonian....


Tom Roberts
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