Quote:
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Originally Posted by Qfwfq
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by CraigD
the effect of a gravitation field can be distinguished from that of acceleration by the observation that, in the case of a gravitational field, a object some distance “above” another experiences less force than an equal mass “below” it.
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(Grooooooooan...) 
That's obvious! As stated in GR, the principle says that, for any point P, a coordinate map can be chosen to be locally inertial. Think of it along the lines of a straight line tangent to a curve. Learn differential geometry before saying GR is faulty. |
Egads! I’ve received the dreaded
emoticon!
I am familiar with the literature, and, while not a professional physicist, do have (or had – what you don’t use, you lose!) a reasonably good Math education.
The point I was trying to make is not that GR is faulty – which I don’t believe (or truly feel competent to have an opinion on) - but that its equivalency principle is much less intuitive and compelling than SR’s.
Back in my teaching days, I was delighted at the number of non-science majors who were able, even with a sub-standard grasp of algebra, to quickly comprehend the fundamentals of SR. While many could also follow the logic of GR, it seemed to lack SR’s capacity for provoking an “ah-ha” of intuitive comprehension. Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that the unaccelerated inertial frame of SR’s equivalency principle is more natural and intuitive than the point-localized one required by GR.
Alas, I can think of no way to make GR more palatable to the casual science student. Analogies involving marbles, bowling balls, and rubber sheets work fairly well to describe its conclusions, but its derivation from first principles lacks the elegant, geometric simplicity or SR’s.
