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History 181B:  Modern Physics
Class 21 (3/5/01) 
General relativity
(Class 20 was the midterm.)
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Outline General relativity

     What to do about non-inertial reference frames?
         A new invariance principle:  acceleration and gravity
         The equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass
         The framework:  warped space-time

     Experimental consequences
          The precession of the perihelion of Mercury
          The deflection of light near a massive body:  the eclipse of 1919
          A few other consequences

Names and terms 
Primary Secondary
non-Euclidean geometry
parallel postulate
Arthur Eddington (1882-1944)
gravitational redshift
gyroscope
Loránd Eötvös (1848-1919)
Copyright © Cathryn Carson 2001