Potential Energy Explained: Does It Contradict Conservation of Mass/Energy?

[pmb_phy]

Pete - I now realize that it made no sense to address my post to you. We seem to be in complete agreement, bar the point about the rest mass of the system where I temporarily went insane - you are of course 100% correct.

I will remind you of this when it becomes my turn and my head explodes and messes up the place.

Pete

 

[pmb_phy]

What is still bothering me is the weight mechanism (the force of gravity)... I'm unsure as to why the "weight" of a system would be dependent of the invariant mass of the system (as opposed to the sum of the invariant masses of the constituent particles)... It was no problem before when I thought that invariant mass was additive... but it isn't clear now. Can you elaborate? Thanks.

I too thought about this. I knew that E = mc^2. But what I wanted to know was Why? People rearely ask themselves this question since they seem to assume that there can be no answer to "Why?" questions. I'm not one of those people. Please see

On the concept of mass in relativity, Peter M. Brown

I placed this online today at
http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/mass_paper.pdf

See page 52 section - XI Why does E = mc²

I addressed the mechanis for 3 different kinkds of energy as I recall. This should be the best answer you're going to get on the interent.

Pete

 

[learningphysics]

I too thought about this. I knew that E = mc^2. But what I wanted to know was Why? People rearely ask themselves this question since they seem to assume that there can be no answer to "Why?" questions. I'm not one of those people. Please see

On the concept of mass in relativity, Peter M. Brown

I placed this online today at
http://www.geocities.com/physics_world/mass_paper.pdf

See page 52 section - XI Why does E = mc²

I addressed the mechanis for 3 different kinkds of energy as I recall. This should be the best answer you're going to get on the interent.

Pete

Hi Peter. The paper was very useful. I'm wondering... mass in a gravitational field... If we have two masses in a gravitational field at rest... then we take the two masses further apart and keep them at rest. The way I understand it, the total mass has increased now. Is the mechanism involved in increasing the mass analogous to that of the electrical force? What about the other fundamental forces?

The mechanism that creates mass associated with electrostatic potential energy... it almost seems like the mass of E/c^2 comes out coincidentally. On page 55 you write "Utilizing electrodynamics Boyer has shown that... Comparison with proper energy gives us the expected result"... Could the result have been otherwise?


Is there any book that you can recommend on Special Relativity that will help give a good solid foundation (hopefully give enough to prepare you to learn about GR) ? More rigorous the better.