The Week That Was at Coal Mine Cottage

Hi again to all,


And yes I am writing two days in a row... shock horror does this mean “the week that was” is winding up again into its former glory...

So there I am riding my bike to work this morning (yes you heard it correctly) I ride a bike to work, it was a balmy 22 degrees at 6.30am... I chose to ride through the beautiful old Toronto University as it brings out my inner academic. As I ride I quote Shakespeare and hum Wolfgang's early works (or as I know him Wolfy) I also ponder the theory of relativity “general relativity” that is..........

(General relativity is a theory of gravitation developed by Einstein in the years 1907–1915. The development of general relativity began with the equivalence principle, under which the states of accelerated motion and being at rest in a gravitational field (for example when standing on the surface of the Earth) are physically identical. The upshot of this is that free fall is inertial motion; an object in free fall is falling because that is how objects move when there is no force being exerted on them, instead of this being due to the force of gravity as is the case in classical mechanics. This is incompatible with classical mechanics and special relativity because in those theories inertially moving objects cannot accelerate with respect to each other, but objects in free fall do so. To resolve this difficulty Einstein first proposed that spacetime is curved. In 1915, he devised the Einstein field equations which relate the curvature of spacetime with the mass, energy, and momentum within it).

........and low and behold I round the corner and come upon this picturesque nature vista (see attached photo)...

two things are strange here;
(1) is simple... Racoons are not usually out during the day
(2) Why do Racoons always look like they have been caught in the act and or like burglars...?
Regardless of that he was so hot and thirsty that apart from keeping an eye on me the little fella let me get about 10' from him before lifting his head and snarling...

For those of you who are obviously wondering (and will more than likely ask) what is the other Theory of Relativity?? It is “Special” now there are some big words in here so some may have to do homework... there will be a pop quiz tomorrow...

Special relativity is a theory of the structure of spacetime. It was introduced in Albert Einstein's 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" (for the contributions of many other physicists see History of special relativity). Special relativity is based on two postulates which are contradictory in classical mechanics:
1. The laws of physicsare the same for all observers in uniform motionrelative to one another (principle of relativity),
2. The speed of lightin a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of their relative motion or of the motion of the source of the light.
The resultant theory agrees with experiment better than classical mechanics, e.g. in the Michelson-Morley experiment that supports postulate 2, but also has many surprising consequences...
.....you look it up as I’m sick of telling you everything...

So that’s all for now, I look to the fore to communicating with you all presently... and no I have not been drinking...
Cheers
Toronto Pip
Global Bloke of Ambiguity