OT:Tempted to get this book

[narf poit chez BOOM]

'When you lift something up, you increase its mass by a very small amount. When it drops, it's mass decreases.'

Could you provide some back-up for that, please? Very interesting.

If you do buy it, keep lots of notes and cross-reference everything.

[Aiken]

My good friend once named such kind of books as SciBi - Scientifical Bible, because both Bible and "Yet another theory of everything" books pretend that they have all answers. Cheap reading.

edit: author's attacks on Newton theory of gravity are amusing, it seems he have never heard of general relativity, Minkowsky-Riemann space and world lines

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Please refrain from Ad Hominem attacks. http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...d-hominem.html

[deccan]

He also repeatedly claims that the "twin paradox" and the atomic clock experiment relating to the effect of time dilation is logically faulty because movement is relative. However, in standard science, it is not movement that is responsible for the time dilation effect but acceleration.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

deccan said:
He also repeatedly claims that the "twin paradox" and the atomic clock experiment relating to the effect of time dilation is logically faulty because movement is relative. However, in standard science, it is not movement that is responsible for the time dilation effect but acceleration.

Interesting. The common assumption I've always encountered is that the closer one gets to light speed, the slower time goes.

What's a good 'physics for dummies' book?

[Arkcon]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
What's a good 'physics for dummies' book?

If you'd like an Online resource The Motion Mountain is pretty famous and well respected.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Since it brings up that 'if it only moves halfway' arguement, I'm as skeptical about it as I am about the other book.

That supposed quandry has been solved numerous times. It only moves halfway if you only look at half the time. It imposes an artificial restriction on a natural phonomenon and then claims that the natural phonomenon must follow this artificial restriction and therefore this natural canot phonomenon occur. How are we to get rid of this quandary? Same way a rational person solves all arguements involving arrows and turtles.

[deccan]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Please refrain from Ad Hominem attacks. http://www.nizkor.org/features/falla...d-hominem.html

That's a valid point, but one can't help but notice and comment on the observation that the author's behavior is very similar to that of a snake-oil salesman. "Buy this book and all will be revealed!" His free preview chapter supposedly pokes holes in standard science, but stops just short of revealing how his final theory resolves the problems.

If he were really serious about scientific inquiry, he should have made the essential theory itself freely available.

[douglas]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
'When you lift something up, you increase its mass by a very small amount. When it drops, it's mass decreases.'

Could you provide some back-up for that, please? Very interesting.

I don't remember where I heard or read or inferred that, and I can't find any solid support for it on google. The closest thing I've found is this with a short paragraph about whether "gravitational energy" acts as a source of gravity and no definite conclusion. Now that I think about it, it would be nearly impossible to test that because the difference in mass is so tiny. It makes sense to me, but I can't back it up.

That chapter also ignores the fact that Newton's law of gravity has far fewer restrictions on when it is valid than any other theory or equation dealing with the same phenomena except general relativity. IMO it's a bunch of pseudo-scientific bunk.

[Aiken]

Probably you meant that there's possibility of slight difference between gravitational and inertial masses. IIRC it's based on the definition that full energy E = mc^2 + K + W, there K - kinetic energy, and W - potential energy in the gravitational field, so higher module of W (closer to gravitating mass) means lower E (and smaller mass), since W is negative.

He also repeatedly claims that the "twin paradox" and the atomic clock experiment relating to the effect of time dilation is logically faulty because movement is relative. However, in standard science, it is not movement that is responsible for the time dilation effect but acceleration.

Actually t'= t*sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). There's nothing about acceleration here. Accelerating frames are matter of special relativity. Also twin paradox can be solved in special relativity only (edit: sorry not special, but general relativity in both cases).