English

"Relativistic" particle dynamics without relativity

History and Philosophy of Physics 2018-11-28 v1

Abstract

It is shown that the correct expressions for momentum and kinetic energy of a particle moving at high speed were already implicit in physics going back to Maxwell. The demonstration begins with a thought experiment of Einstein by which he derived the inertial equivalence of energy, independently of the relativity postulates. A simple modification of the same experiment does the rest.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1512.01439,
  title  = {"Relativistic" particle dynamics without relativity},
  author = {Allan Walstad},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.01439},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

5 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:01:39.394Z