4 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
Accelerations can be sensed, and a rotating body is undergoing an acceleration (the velocity is changing because of a change in direction). Because of that, you don't need an external frame to know you were rotating.
The classic example is imagine sitting in the back of a moving truck with no windows. If the road is perfectly smooth, you would have no way of knowing what speed you were going, but if the truck turned a corner you would be able to tell, even without looking outside.
Comment by Umikaloo at 24/07/2024 at 19:57 UTC*
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I understand that part, but how could we say that its the truck accelerating, and not say, the entire universe around it?
Is the distinction just arbitrary? (This object is rotating because it is experiencing angular acceleration, and it is experiencing angular acceleration because it is rotating.) or is there some larger frame of reference? Perhaps a universal axis that everything exists in relativity to? Maybe that frame of reference is just an average of all the mass in the universe? Beats me.