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This single experimental observation/idea is the basis for all of special relativity.
Special relativity is the direct result of people bending their backs to accommodate for this really weird fact.
Bibliography:
- Subtle is the Lord by Abraham Pais (1982) chapter III "Relativity, the special theory" has a good sketch as you may imagine.
- moving magnet and conductor problem: the more experiments confirm Maxwell's equations, the more special relativity has to be correct
- aberration TODO more precisely how it is evidence.
The equation that allows us to calculate stuff in special relativity!
Take two observers with identical rules and stopwatch, and aligned axes, but one is on a car moving at towards the direction at speed .
When both observe an event, if we denote:It is of course arbitrary who is standing and who is moving, we will just use the term "standing" for the one without primes.
- the observation of the standing observer
- the observation of the ending observer on a car
Note that if tends towards zero, then this reduces to the usual Galilean transformations which our intuition expects:
The following aspects of Maxwell's equations make no sense without special relativity:
- the Lorentz force would be different observers have different speeds, see e.g.: charged particle moving at the same speed of electrons thought experiment
- Maxwell's equations imply that the speed of light is the same for all inertial reference frames
When charged particle though experiment are seen from the point of view of special relativity, it becomes clear that magnetism is just a direct side effect of charges being viewed in special relativity. One is philosophically reminded of how spin is the consequence of quantum mechanics + special relativity.
Just like for the finite general linear group, the definition of special also works for finite fields, where 1 is the multiplicative identity!
Note that the definition of orthogonal group may not have such a clear finite analogue on the other hand.
Some blogs:
- blog.codinghorror.com/the-best-code-is-no-code-at-all/ The Best Code is No Code At All (2007)
- www.skrenta.com/2007/05/code_is_our_enemy.html Code is our enemy (2007)
Also resonates with backward design.
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 2. You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either OurBigBook.com or as a static website.
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally. Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact