# Tag Info

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Velocity is a vector. Speed is its magnitude. Position is a vector. Length (or distance) is its magnitude. A vector points in a direction in space. A negative vector (or more precisely "the negative of a vector") simply points the opposite way. If I drive from my home to my workplace (and then defining my positive direction in that way), then my velocity ...

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There is a consistent definition, but it involves a couple of arbitrary thresholds, so I doubt you'd consider it rigorous. The construction $X \gg Y$ means that the ratio $\frac{Y}{X}$ is small enough that subleading terms in the series expansion for $f\bigl(\frac{Y}{X}\bigr) - f(0)$ can be neglected, where $f$ is some relevant function involved in the ...

23

"A state of rest" is a relative term. Relative means - measured in comparison to the things around it. When you sit in a train and sip from a cup of coffee, you can do so because the cup is still relative to you even though both of you might be hurtling through the countryside at 200 km/h. For most experiments, objects can be considered "at rest" if they ...

17

The definition of a wave is not that it is the oscillation of a medium. Waves are called waves because they are solutions to a wave equation, which is, for a generic "excitation" $A(t,x)$ depending on the time $t$ and some spatial coordinate $x\in\mathbb{R}^n$, of the general form $$\frac{\partial^2 A}{\partial t^2} = c^2\Delta A$$ where $\Delta$ is the ...

15

A fermion is any particle, elementary or composite, that obeys Fermi-Dirac (as opposed to Bose-Einstein) statistics relating to how identical particles behave when you swap two of them. Due to an important but complicated result, this is taken to amount to having half-integer spin. A lepton is one type of elementary particle with spin 1/2. The only leptons ...

13

What is “special” and what is “general” in Relativity? The "special" in special relativity refers to the fact that it is not a universal theory. Predictions made by special relativity only apply under certain special circumstances. Those special circumstances are where gravitation is not present or can essentially be ignored. Initially I thought in ...

12

SR: Flat Space-time (Minkowski metric), no gravity, Lorentz coordinates transformations (usually $\Lambda \in SO^+(3,1)$, the proper orthochronous Lorentz group). Acceleration is allowed, but you usually want to work with inertial frames. GR: Curved Space-time (non trivial and dynamic metric tensor), theory of gravitation, generic coordinates ...

12

A c-number basically means 'classical' number, which is basically any quantity which is not a quantum operator which acts on elements of the Hilbert space of states of a quantum system. It is meant to distinguish from q-numbers, or 'quantum' numbers, which are quantum operators. See http://wikipedia.org/wiki/C-number and the reference therein.

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In addition to the other answers, back in the olden days they were thought of as oscillations in the ether. As a result of the Michelson-Morley experiment back in 1887, physicists began to think that there was no ether. But the term didn't change.

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Special relativity is physics in a $3+1$ dimensional Lorentzian spacetime, with the additional requirement that the spacetime is flat, which determines spacetime completely. General relativity is physics in a $3+1$ dimensional Lorentzian spacetime, with no additional geometric requirement. An equation for the metric is required to determine the spacetime, ...

9

A fermion is any particle characterized by Fermi–Dirac statistics and obeying the Pauli exclusion principle. So for example quarks are fermions, as are Helium-3 atoms. A fermion does not have to be an elementary particle. I'm not even sure that it has to be spin $\tfrac{1}{2}$, though I can't think of any fermions that aren't. A lepton is a spin ...

8

OK I don't understand anything.when I placed my mobile phone on the ground, its accelerometer shows nine point something m/s^2. So is that the value of its acceleration? That is the value of the phone's proper acceleration. From the Wikipedia article "Proper acceleration": proper acceleration is the physical acceleration (i.e., measurable ...

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The current mathematical formulation of Quantum Mechanics is based on the theory of Operator Algebras. The fundamental Axiom is that a mechanical system is described by a C*-algebra and the set of states is given by (a restriction of) the state space of the said C*-algebra. Hilbert spaces come into play from the representation theory of C*-algebras. Given a ...

8

In a very mathematical sense, more often than not a mode refers to an eigenvector of a linear equation. Consider the coupled springs problem $$\frac{d}{dt^2} \left[ \begin{array}{cc} x_1 \\ x_2 \end{array} \right] =\left[ \begin{array}{cc} - 2 \omega_0^2 & \omega_0^2 \\ \omega_0^2 & - \omega_0^2 \end{array} \right] \left[ \begin{array}{cc} x_1 \\ x_2 ... 8 Electrostatic refers to the case where the fields are not time dependent. In that case the Maxwell's equations reduce to:$$\nabla \cdot E =\frac{\rho}{\epsilon_o} \\ \nabla \times E = 0 \implies E=-\nabla \phi \\ \text{then,} \nabla \cdot \nabla \phi = \nabla^2 \phi = -\frac{\rho}{\epsilon_o} $$The solution to the last equation is:$$ \phi = ...

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A resonance (in the particle physics or related physics sense) and an unstable particle is exactly the same thing. The object has some complex mass and the imaginary part determines the decay width (and decay rate). But these two terms describe different aspects of the same thing. "A particle" refers to the object, the particle species (in your URL's case, ...

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The word 'Physics' comes from the Greek Word for 'Nature' (written as 'φύση'). From Google: 'etymology of physics' physics - ˈfɪzɪks noun: physics the branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy. The subject matter of physics includes mechanics, heat, light and other radiation, sound, electricity, magnetism, ...

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Why are states rays? (Answer to OP's 1. and 2.) One of the fundamental tenets of quantum mechanics is that states of a physical system correspond (not necessarily uniquely - this is what projective spaces in QM are all about!) to vectors in a Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$, and that the Born rule gives the probability for a system in state $\lvert \psi ... 7 what does memorylessness mean? Essentially, it means that the length of a rod and the rate of a clock depend on their current state only. The alternative would require that, e.g., two otherwise identical clocks at rest with respect to each other may run at different rates if their histories differed. 6 In short, to my understanding: homogeneous : the property is not a function of position, i.e. it does not depend on$x$,$y$or$z$. isotropic: the property does not depend on a particular direction. NB: you can have a homogenous property that is not isotropic, i.e. the refractive index of a birefringent material: it is a constant, but this constant has ... 6 Hertz should be understood to mean "periodic events per second". I your case the events are the display of frames, so yes, you would be perfectly justified in using$\mathrm{Hz}$. That said, as several commenters have already mentioned, the unit "Hertz" does not specify what kind of periodic behavior is being counted. So the author(s) or speaker must make ... 6 A paper came out this week pointing to them having a banal (if amusing) origin: they are from two 27 year old microwave ovens. When people get impatient and open the door before the timer runs down, a short burst from the ovens' magnetron is released, which appears as a peryton if the telescope is pointed in the right direction. Figure 7. shows the perytons ... 6 From the math point of view, you cannot have “negative velocity” in itself, only “negative velocity in a given direction”. The velocity is a 3-dimension vector, there is no such thing as a positive or negative 3D vector. However, if you consider the velocity in direction$\mathrm{x}$, where$\hat{\mathbf{e}}_{\mathrm{x}}$is some ... 6 To fill out Mew's comment further: A slit is a gap wide enough for the electron to pass through True, but for the purposes of a clear discussion of double slit interference, we need the following further quality: a slit should be such that there is much less than a wavelength difference between the pathlength of all paths through the putative "slit" to ... 6 Revolving around the sun is equivalent to free fall around the sun, so the revolution allows you not to 'feel' the sun's gravity. The rotation of the earth is something that can be measured: (i) a centrifugal force which is a small offset on gravity, and (ii) causes the coriolis force. Both these are small effects, so can often be ignored for laboratory ... 5 The term c-number is used informally in the way Meer Ashwinkumar describes. As far as I know, it doesn't have a widely promulgated formal definition. However, there is a formal definition for c-number that agrees with the way the term is used in many cases, including the case you're asking about. As you may know, you can think of the operator formalism for ... 5 I think the answer is no. It generally precedes some approximation method with a bounded error, but there are so many approximations methods in physics -- some rigorous, some nonrigorous -- that it's way too presumptuous to give it a rigorous definition. Generally, it means one of several things: If$a\ll b$, expanding in powers of$\frac{a}{b}$is ... 5 In relativity (both special and general) one of the key quantities is the proper length given by: $$ds^2 = g_{\alpha\beta}dx^\alpha dx^\beta \tag{1}$$ where$g_{\alpha\beta}$is the metric tensor. The physical significance of this is that if we have a small displacement in spacetime$(dx^0, dx^1, dx^2, dx^3)$then$ds$is the total distance moved. You ... 5 The Osher paper does define what a weak solution is. We seek a solution$w$of$x$and$t$such that $$\partial_t w + \partial_x f(w) = 0$$ for a known function$f$(the flux function), given initial conditions $$w(x,0) = w_0(x)$$ for known$w_0$, for$-\infty < x < \infty$and$0 < t < \infty\$. A weak solution is a bounded measurable ...

5

I agree with your definition of locality (probably not surprising :)). Causality I would say is the statement that an event in the future should not affect an event in the past. We can formulate this in classical physics terms. Causality is necessary in order for there to be a well defined initial value problem: I should be able to choose an initial time ...

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