Re: operationally inertial frames

["A. R. Marlow" <marlow@LOYNO.EDU>]

I don't think it's nitpicking to point out that, if the shaking of the
earth were at all fast, the structure of the earth would be altered
(shape, Etc., crushed? smashed?) from the application of the forces needed
to do the job.  I think that would be pretty noticeable, locally and
globally.

On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, John Mallinckrodt wrote:

> 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

A. R. Marlow                          E-MAIL:  marlow@loyno.edu
Department of Physics, Box 124        PHONE:   (504) 865 3647  (Office)
Loyola University                              (504) 864 7315  (Home)
New Orleans, LA  70118                FAX:     (504) 865 2453