SPOTKANIE 24 lutego 2014 (Sylvain Poirier)

SKFiz Seminar
Date and time	25 February 2014 Tuesday, 19:15
Place	SDT, Faculty of Physics UW, ul. Hoża 69, Warszawa
Speaker	SYLVAIN POIRIER
Title	Understanding Special Relativity by geometric intuition (2/2)
Synopsis	Space and time are known to be mere aspects (dimensions) of a 4-dimensional space, whose geometry (of Minkowski) is very similar to the usual (Euclidean) space geometry, while the classical ideas of space and time should be dismissed as misleading, unphysical tools. But instead of trying to prove this inside the wrong language, we will show how the concepts and intuition of pure geometry (without time) can directly serve as a better initial basis to understand and express the theory: - How to imagine an Euclidean space playing a role of space-time, approximately Galilean for small speeds and with "relativistic effects" at large speeds. - What is affine geometry, made of the common concepts between geometries of Euclid and Minkowski. - How the articulations between affine and Euclidean geometries can guide us to define and represent the geometry of Minkowski. - How to formally convert properties and formulas describing common phenomena between geometries, so as to effectively resolve some Relativity problems by geometry.