I'll not pour more kerosene on the fire, but I would like to comment on "right" vs "wrong", as this is a good example of how science adds depth and color to the picture, but laypeople think of the adding of depth and color as "refutation" of the original sketch, when it should be viewed as making for a more complete painting of what was sketched.  Yet again, the gap is math.  It always is. Words fail, so without robust math, one cannot see how the underlying theme remains intact. 

> We all believed Newton's laws for over 200 years and then Einstein came along and showed Newton was very, very close under most conditions but still wrong.  

I would point out that skyscrapers, long bridges and tunnels, and every space mission ever were all calculated with nothing more than Newton's laws and the equations that result from them.  Newton was right and STILL IS RIGHT for every possible scenario except those involving "speed of light" and very large distances.  Einstein made zero difference to the lives of laypeople except for a few special cases:

a)  GPS satellites would be "off" by about 7 microseconds a day without compensating for both relativistic effects and gravity.  This would make an accumulating error of about 5 miles per day for a location that was "accurate" yesterday, so 5, 10, 15, 20 miles...  pretty serious error would result.

b) Cathode-Ray Tubes (computer CRTs and old TVs) would shoot electrons and the screen at about 30 percent of the speed of light, so the magnet designs had to take relativistic effects into account.  Without Einstein, larger CRT screens would have been very hit-and-miss, cut-and-try affairs.  But CRTs are obsolete these days.

c) Light and other forms of electro-magnetic fields can sometimes not be completely understood without accounting for relativistic effects, but this level of understanding is far more detailed than most anyone ever requires to have a good grasp of the basics.

Other than examples like the above, no one need worry about relativistic effects outside those working the day shift in the hardcore sciences.  I will admit that when I have to worry about them, I most often end up looking in a reference book table somewhere, just like a mechanic would look in a gear catalog table for a replacement gear of the proper size with the correct number of teeth.  No one calculates that stuff themselves, we all lean hard on Mathematica and MATLAB.

Einstein himself said:

"No one must think that Newton’s great creation can be overthrown in any real sense by this [Theory of Relativity] or by any other theory. His clear and wide ideas will forever retain their significance as the foundation on which our modern conceptions of physics have been built."
The Times [of London] (11/28/1919)

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html