Mr. SQUID by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
This is the cutest product name ever.
Since 1992, Mr. SQUID has been the standard educational demonstration system for undergraduate physics lab courses.
YBCO device, runs on liquid nitrogen.
Poincaré group by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
In simple and concrete terms. Suppose you observe N particles following different trajectories in Spacetime.
There are two observers traveling at constant speed relative to each other, and so they see different trajectories for those particles:
Note that the first two types of transformation are exactly the non-relativistic Galilean transformations.
The Poincare group is the set of all matrices such that such a relationship like this exists between two frames of reference.
Translation group by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
This is a good and simple first example of Lie algebra to look into.
Galilean invariance by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
A law of physics is Galilean invariant if the same formula works both when you are standing still on land, or when you are on a boat moving at constant velocity.
For example, if we were describing the movement of a point particle, the exact same formulas that predict the evolution of must also predict , even though of course both of those will have different values.
It would be extremely unsatisfactory if the formulas of the laws of physics did not obey Galilean invariance. Especially if you remember that Earth is travelling extremelly fast relative to the Sun. If there was no such invariance, that would mean for example that the laws of physics would be different in other planets that are moving at different speeds. That would be a strong sign that our laws of physics are not complete.
The consequence/cause of that is that you cannot know if you are moving at a constant speed or not.
Lorentz invariance generalizes Galilean invariance to also account for special relativity, in which a more complicated invariant that also takes into account different times observed in different inertial frames of reference is also taken into account. But the fundamental desire for the Lorentz invariance of the laws of physics remains the same.
Covariance by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Generally means that he form of the equation does not change if we transform .
This is generally what we want from the laws of physics.
E.g. a Galilean transformation generally changes the exact values of coordinates, but not the form of the laws of physics themselves.
Lorentz covariance is the main context under which the word "covariant" appears, because we really don't want the form of the equations to change under Lorentz transforms, and "covariance" is often used as a synonym of "Lorentz covariance".
TODO some sources distinguish "invariant" from "covariant": invariant vs covariant.
Generalization of orthogonal group to preserve different bilinear forms. Important because the Lorentz group is .

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