From: Frank Prengel (prengel@physik.tu-berlin.de)
Date: Wed Jun 10 1998 - 06:11:35 MDT
On Tue, 9 Jun 1998, Tony Hollick wrote:
> Maxwell's theory does conform fully with Classical Mechanics.
I tend to disagree here (and not only here :-). Newton's laws are
invariant under Galilei transformations (e.g., x' = x + v*t, with
v=const), whereas Maxwell's equations are not. They are, however,
invariant under Lorentz transformations, and I think that's what Einstein
lead to applying them to mechanical problems as well, in order to explain
the Michelson-Morley experiments. The rest is history...
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[ Frank Prengel (prengel@physik.tu-berlin.de) ]
[ Institut fuer Theoretische Physik, TU Berlin ]
[ http://itp1.physik.TU-Berlin.DE:80/~prengel/ ]
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