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Old 07-01-2009, 03:42 PM
Pmb Pmb is offline
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Thanks everyone. It is an honor to be a helper.

I'm always looking for better ways to explain physics so I have a question for all of you. Someone recently made the assertion that if you give someone more than a simple yes or no answer to a simple question then the person asking the question is overwhelmed. I find that to be a silly assertion. Here is the example I used.

Suppose someone asks you the question "Does light have mass?" One person answers "No". I find that to be misleading. Here is how I wold answer it "A photon has zero rest mass, since it can't be at rest, non-zero relativistic mass since it has momentum, non-zero passive gravitational mass, since its effected by a gravitational field and non-zero active gravitational mass since it can generate a gravitational field."

Are any of you overwhelmed by that answer? I could have gotten more precise since "light" and "photon" are different things and the answer can be more complicated depending on the exact nature of the light.

Last edited by Pmb; 07-01-2009 at 03:45 PM.
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