The seventh iteration of Philosophia Naturalis is now online at geek counterpoint. These ‘blog carnivals’ are increasingly helpful because they cluster articles of interest, and I always wind up learning about new things to read. This carnival’s find is Rob Knop (Vanderbilt), whose Galactic Interactions blog offers an intriguing entry on what he calls ‘The Greatest Mystery in All of Physics,” which turns out to be the link between gravitational and inertial mass. Another find: Cosmic Variance‘s take on relativity and why E=mc2. Which gets us into a thought experiment:
Think of a physicist, standing at one side of a large box, which itself is sitting on a perfectly frictionless surface (think of ice if you like). The physicist possesses a large cannon, which she is using to hurl heavy cannonballs across the box. What happens to the whole system?
The answer is informative and entertaining, particularly when you replace the cannon with a powerful laser. Read the rest at the site, and have fun exploring the rest of this month’s Philosophia Naturalis.
