relativistic mechanics: Quick Facts

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Figure 1: The world line of a particle traveling with speed less than that of light.

Figure 2: The world line of an accelerating body moving slower than the speed of light; the tangent vector corresponds to the body's 4-velocity and the curvature vector to its 4-acceleration.

Figure 3: The world line of a particle moving forward in time (see text).

Figure 4: The decay of a particle of mass M into two particles the sum of whose rest masses is less than M (see text).

Figure 5: The world lines of an electron (moving forward in time) and a positron (moving backward in time) that annihilate into two photons (see text).

Understand the concept of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity

Learn about the incomplete definition of momentum and its modification in the theory of relativity

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Italian-born physicist Dr. Enrico Fermi draws a diagram at a blackboard with mathematical equations. circa 1950.

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