We show how students can be led to an understanding of the connection between special relativity and general relativity by considering the time dilation effect of clocks placed on the surface of the Earth. This paper is written as a Socratic dialog between a lecturer and a student.
REFERENCES
1.
Meno by Plato translated with an introduction by Benjamin Jowett, <etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/p71mo/>.
2.
The Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, <www.bipm.fr/>.
3.
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Colatitude is minus latitude. It is the coordinate of choice for most references on planetary gravitational potentials.
7.
Claude
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This is the total mass of the Earth including the atmosphere. Because we are calculating the gravitational potential at sea level, we should subtract the mass of the atmosphere, but we do not need to do this subtraction as the mass of the atmosphere is roughly one millionth of the total mass of the Earth.
9.
10.
This value of is defined to fit the ellipsoidal Earth model WGS84. See <earth-info.nga.mil/GandG/wgsegm/> for more details.
11.
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Bernard F.
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(Cambridge University Press
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).© 2006 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2006
American Association of Physics Teachers
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