Re: Preposterous change of variables


actionintegral@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Igor wrote:
actionintegral@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Who says you're in a frame or occupy any sort of spacetime?

Fair enough. There are no constraints on solving equations. Let me
refine my statement.

I am attempting to solve the wave equation for an electromagnetic wave.
I blithely substitute
u=x-ct and v=x+ct and solve. According to the Lorentz transformation,
this substitution is not allowed.

What's the LT have to do with it? By the way, you can still perform
LTs on u and v, so your statement is incorrect. Technically, (u,v) are
called light cone coordinates and their LTs are even simpler than in
(x,t). Look up light cone coordinates under LTs.

.