Re: operationally inertial frames

[John Mallinckrodt <ajmallinckro@CSUPOMONA.EDU>]

On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, I wrote:

> ... if the earth and all of its occupants were accelerated in some
> direction at an arbitrarily large rate, say 1000 g, we'd have *no* local
> way of detecting that fact and we could treat the earth's surface as a
> Newtonian inertial frame anyway.

Perhaps it would help to make this important point more forcefully (so to
speak) if I add that we could even "shake" the earth and all of its
inhabitants with an *arbitrary* time dependence and still have no local
way of detecting that fact as long as the shake was performed
inertially, that is, applied to each particle in the form of a time
dependent force that is proportional to each particle's inertial mass.

There; *that* oughta force someone to develop enough outrage that they
will find a "nitpicking" flaw in my argument!  ;-)

John Mallinckrodt      mailto:ajm@csupomona.edu
Cal Poly Pomona          http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm